And the fact of the matter is that Photoshop has far from the world's greatest UI either (for one of the usual reasons--so much stuff has been incrementally added over time) so saying a UI is bad compared to Photoshop really is pretty damning. Contrast with Lightroom which, although I disagree with one or two of the fundamental design decisions, was coherently designed from the ground up.
The situation with The GIMP is really a lot like OpenOffice on a smaller scale. Lots of people would like a free image editing program but it's a big undertaking to produce something that's competitive with the proprietary alternatives and there's no commercial organization that sees benefit in supporting such an effort.
The situation with The GIMP is really a lot like OpenOffice on a smaller scale. Lots of people would like a free image editing program but it's a big undertaking to produce something that's competitive with the proprietary alternatives and there's no commercial organization that sees benefit in supporting such an effort.