Seashore - image editing for the rest of us (with Macs)

I have been struggling for the last few months with Photoshop. My image editing needs are pretty basic. Making changes to existing images, making the background of images transparent, combining multiple images into one and so on.

I just cannot seem to get the hang of Photoshop. To do simple things, I would have to ask some Photoshop guru to help me. It is just not intuitive enough. Well, it might work for professionals; it probably is designed for professionals, but not for a novice like me.

This afternoon, I had a similar need - some simple image editing to do. I launched Photoshop on my MacBook. I struggled as usual. I quit the app for the nth time in the past few months without saving any of the changes I made. I was frustrated. For such simple things, I hate asking anyone else. Heck, I was a developer. I should be able to make such small changes to my images, shouldn't I?

I then remembered Seashore, which someone had suggested some months back, which I had installed and then forgotten all about. I launched it. A very simple interface. Basic options. Not intimidating like Photoshop. And within a few minutes I figured my way around and got my thing done. I struggled to do the same with Photoshop.

And the best part of it all - undo in Seashore is the familiar Cmd + Z. Always. In Photoshop, for some strange reason, that works only the first time. From the second time onwards, you had to do Cmd + Option + Z!!! I got to know this only this evening when I was discussing this with the Photoshop guru. I always thought Photoshop had only one level of Undo and that really, really sucked.

Why in the world would anyone design it that way??

Powered behind the scenes by GIMP, the image editing program from GNU, Seashore is really good for people like me who want to do some basic stuff with images. Its Mac only, however.