[ndiddy]

I grew up using Paint Shop Pro, so I'm not familiar with either. I've recently had to start using both Photoshop and GIMP (Photoshop because the best tool for descreening printed documents is the Sattva Descreen Photoshop plugin, GIMP because I've largely switched to Linux). GIMP is not like most software. With Photoshop, there's tons of functionality but I can usually figure out what to do by poking around in the menus and hovering at the icons in the toolbar. With GIMP, I have to keep looking online for how to do basic things, and the program keeps behaving in unusual ways.

For example, let's say I added a text block to an image. I then select the text layer, there's a box drawn around the text, and I try moving the text around with the move tool. In every other image editor I've used, this will move the text around, but in GIMP this will move the background layer around unless you specifically click on the text and not just inside the box (which can be difficult depending on the font you used). Every aspect of using GIMP works like this. Everything is implemented in a counterintuitive manner. The closest analogue I can think of is it's like figuring out how to play old versions of Dwarf Fortress from before they overhauled the UI for the Steam release.

[Izkata]

That's an option on the Move tool, whether to move the current layer or the thing you clicked on.

As someone who has never used Photoshop, I've always found Gimp to be pretty intuitive, and reading some of the complaints on here I expect I'd find Photoshop strange and unintuitive. For example, one of the comparisons above is about copy/paste, but from their description the Gimp version is much closer to how copy/paste works in general, where you have to paste to create the new copy before you can manipulate it.