Photoshop vs. The GIMP. Which is better?

Essentially no difference between them that I've found for image manipulation. Even the key-presses are largely similar. Really, this is a non-question, in my view. GIMP if you're broke, Photoshop if someone else is paying the bill and you don't care about Adobe's software practices.

These might be a bit old, but they're still tragi-comic:

http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=165

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=426

and others

Many people who endorse Photoshop may be doing so because Adobe got its arm into the industry first and most successfully, so if you have any pretension or expectation to work in that industry, it will undoubtedly be the Adobe suites that you'll be sucking on.

What the designers of The Gimp set out to show was that there wasn't anything particularly special about how Adobe combined all the elements they did into a single program. Naturally, to avoid copyright infringement and litigation entanglements, they had to re-write every routine and interface it slightly differently. Open source invites improvements and suggestions from all over, so while the team involved in Photoshop is impressive (though quite a few names change with each succeeding version), the Gimp team is - well, put it this way: you aren't likely to see so many names together in one place that aren't listed alphabetical order and followed by a telephone number.

The Gimp is currently probably about equal to, if not exceeding in power ar least, Photoshop 4 or 5, but being open source it's fast catching up - and upgrades are free, too - and Adobe has to begin to consider it a serious threat in the home market, at least.

Anyone who learns one system will find its competitors annoying or just "not right" - this is the basis of Microsoft's success over far better and more stable software companies - so we lucky few who started out on the Gimp often can't see what all this Photoshop nonsense is about, anyway. We can still create and produce end products that are in every way at least as good as your average Photoshopper can produce. We can choose add-ons that enable us to output for professional printers or not depending on whether we need that facility or not - or on if we have no better use for our hard-drive capacity. But in the end, going broke to own what, while staying legal, we can have just as easily for free is well worth it in my opinion.