> [W]hy is gimp always shitty?
Have you tried single-window mode? Many, if not most, of the issues that cause people to react negatively to GIMP (other than the name itself) are mitigated in that version of the interface. Single-window mode is kludgy -- it would be greatly improved if all of the application's tools were redesigned for life docked inside a windowed program -- but compared to the old-fashioned "spew windows everywhere" mode, it is much better.