Gimp is really good, it's just the interface that I don't like, floating toolbars everywhere - compared to the ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro that I have, the interface feels like a real mess. Also I can never work out how to get TGA textures which have an alpha channel to load without Gimp loading the alpha channel into the image, so I end up loading them into Paint Shop and removing the alphas so that I can work on them in Gimp.
Don't want to get on my moral soap box here but don't hold in with pirating software, IMHO it's just wrong..it's just a matter of principles I guess, I'm not trying to tell anyone else not to do it. Usually for every commercial program there's a good free alternative (Gimp for graphics, Audacity for sound, Blender for modelling and animations etc, there are a lot of good free/open source programs out there), Gimp is getting to the point now where professionals are starting to give it some respect, if they could just tidy up the interface a bit it would be a seriously good program.
I only started using Max after I got hold of a student license, and then because I needed it for some work I was doing - £200 to realize that for what I did, Blender worked better for me..again, just a personal opinion.