gushing over _____ today

I'm not much of a photo/graphic manipulator/maker myself, but I do always like to keep my eye out for good tools.

Sometime you want photo tweaking, sometime you want vector graphics creation, sometimes you want a universal translator to turn those EPS files into JPGs. There's times when you want CAD-like functionality without the CAD overhead. Times when MS Paint just doesn't do the trick. Times when iPhoto sucks (almost all the time).

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I recommend... The GIMP.

I've known about it for a while, but haven't yet had to reason/opportunity to play with it. While the interface is a little unfamiliar and overall conceptual structure takes a little adjusting to, it's a fantastic piece of software. Especially when you consider that it's free. Yes, Free. No guilty complex about that copy of PhotoShop that you "borrowed" from the office or "are evaluating" way past the trial period. It's got tons of capabilities, and it's cross-platform and multi-lingual, so Mac/Windows/Linux zealots don't have anything to bitch about. The UI layout is consistent across OSes (unlike Mac apps on Win or Win apps on Mac).

I'm not going to lie to you... in order to do even medium-complexity stuff, you have to get used to the concepts of layers, paths, channels, and selection masks, which can be a little strange. But once you're beyond that, it's pretty sweet. Keyboard shortcuts, scripting features... etc. etc. I could go on, but you should give it a try yourself.