I've been using Photoshop since 1995 and Linux since 1994 and I've tried really really hard to like GIMP during the years - and failed every single time. It's just one of those programs I wish I had on floppy so I could break the disk in two.

Anyway, this is more of a Photoshop Elements alternative than CS but if you're on a Windows box I'd recommend the free software Paint.NET ( http://www.getpaint.net/ ), it's completely free and way more intuitive than GIMP, obviously influenced by Photoshop instead of trying to go its own way. It's spartan - no CMYK that I know of - but enough for all basic photo/image editing tasks (unless your profession mostly involve pixels Photoshop is probably overkill anyway).

As the name implies you need .NET installed, but that's easier than telling users to install the Windows port of GTK.