Dear froglover
There is another Free Image editing software called Photobie. It has eveything a good image editing software should have. It has layers like Photoshop You can also use Photoshop *.8Bf filters in it.The most important fact is It has a Forum which answers all your questions
and you can even ask how to do this. The designer of the software is also avialable to solve your problems.It has got least learning curve of all the softwares presently avialable in the market.
Please try the software you may download the latest version from
Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com.
Thanks
Yaksha