Has anyone tried GIMP?

[glatt]

OK, you perverts. Stop thinking about Pulp Fiction.

I just stumbled across the GIMP website. I had never even heard of this image program before, but it sounds promising. I have an old version of Photoshop on my old Mac at home, and a copy of Irfanview on my PC at work. Irfanview is good, but there are lots of things you can't do with it. Batch processing is my favorite thing about Irfanview.

GIMP appear to be free, and looks like it will run on my PC. I'm not a big fan of loading software off the web onto my work computer all willie nilly, so I'm looking for feedback.

Have you used GIMP? Is it any good? Is it stable? Install spyware? Is it safe?

I mostly do basic image adjustments like resizing, cropping, brightness, contrast, color balance. But sometimes I like to fool around with more powerful stuff. I'm pretty familiar with Photoshop, and I've had 3.0 at home for years.

I'm cheap and am only interested in free software. I bought Photoshop 3.0 at full price years ago, and don't want to spend money on this type of software ever again. I've paid my share.

Thanks!