This should be helpful for people that learned Photoshop in the past (for work or in school). From what I understand, a lot of the friction with GIMP is the workflow differences, and potentially unintuitive UI/UX choices.
tldr: recovering Adobe Photoshop user shows you features in the very free and very open source gnu image manipulation program :D
my relevant GIMP config files: https://github.com/BreadOnPenguins/dots/tree/master/.config/GIMP/3.0
GIMP documentation: https://www.gimp.org/docs/
I had that in the beginning too. Once you’re used to the basics you’ll find that most of what you’ve learnt does transfer though.
I think part of the problem, at least for me coming from 20 years on photoshop, was searching for “how do I do this advanced technique in GIMP” before learning the basic layout/structure/tools etc.
YMMV but I highly recommend watching an hour or two of an introductory GIMP course. It’s what made it click for me.