I found GIMP to be very user unfriendly. Even when I knew how a tool worked, it didn't work like I needed it to. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro Version 5 from about 1998 (not X5). It does everything I need it to do but it was not made for modern computers with huge image files. It appears to have a memory leak. If you do too many changes it'll lock up after awhile. I have a mental idea of when it's going to lock up, so I save my work (i.e. changes) frequently and close it periodically. If you close it and restart it periodically it refreshes the memory and you can do pretty much everything you need to do.
I broke down and bought Corel Paint Shop Pro 2018 hoping that the tools would work the same and that it would have fixed the memory management problems. I'm sure it did, but it's unbelievably slow to load and it's a nightmare to find the tools I want to use. They changed the graphics on the toolbar buttons and it is not friendly or intuitive to figure out which are the tools I already know how to use. They border on being cryptic. The only thing I like about it is making gifs with a transparent background. It's the only tool that I feel is improved. I still work out of version 5 up until the point I want a transparent background.
I have Adobe Photoshop CS2, but I don't find it to be user friendly either. The only thing I like about it is taking a skewed photograph of a comic book cover that shows out of proportion and squaring it up to the correct rectangular shape with the cropping tool.
As far as GIMP is concerned, there are a lot of tutorials online. Figure out what you want to do and type GIMP and the version of the program along with the function you are trying to do in the search engine.
Google is horrible now about ignoring your search words and guessing what you wanted to find, so I recommend setting the search options to "verbatim". It seems to actually use your search words more thoroughly with the verbatim option selected.
You question made me wonder if Paint Shop Pro 5 could even be bought on eBay. There is one copy available at $62 or best offer. There are dozens of deceptive listings that are just selling books to teach you how to use it. I would probably be willing to pay $20 to replace my copy if the disc got damaged, but I wouldn't pay $62 for 20 year old software.
