Open source Photoshop alternatives

I have often seen this question on my local LUG mailing list. It's also quite a common occurence on a couple of forum boards I am a regular at. People often wonder how to do the stuff they do in Photoshop. To their rescue comes SodiPodi and GIMP. Another alternative is Inkscape.

Please understand that I have nothing against Photoshop. I love it. Then again, I love GIMP more, and don't blame me. You would too if you were just willing to venture out into it.

Most of my friends whom I have tried to get to work with GIMP gave up in two days.
Their reason: there are no teachers(physical persons next to them) to see them through every step. Tsk Tsk. Poor fellows fail to understand the motto of open source.

SodiPodi has a very similar to Photoshop interface and Inkscape has almost all the features of SodiPodi, which is not hard to fathom considering that Inkscape is a fork of the base SodiPodi.

But if you have used Photoshop for too long now, I recommend you treat yourself to the GIMP. You'd be amazed by what this package has to offer.

Just check out these packages and if you are not satisfied, you can continue spending on properitary software under proprietary platforms.