All I see is stuff about GIMP but I'm not a fan of it. I want something similar to Photoshop CS on Windows but it appears GIMP is the closest thing... Am I wrong? Is there something similar?

the gimp is extremely close... what could make you think it's not "like" photoshop?

there is gimpshop, a small fork of gimp which actaully is meant to behave more like it, but i think it's a sorry world where things have to pretned to not be themselves in order to be used. it has the same code on the inside, does just as good a job as the real thing... use the real thing i say.

You can try running Photoshop CS with wine or you can plunk down some money and definitely get it to run fine with CodeWeavers:

http://www.codeweavers.com/

The Gimp is in no way directly comparable to Photoshop. If you've used Photoshop for any length of time you'd readily admit to this.

Missing features:
- vectors
- macros/actions (No, script-fu does not compare)
- droplets
- layer effects
- editable text (the text feature in The Gimp is broken. Don't believe me? Edit text. modify the text (skew, simulate layer effects by running 30 different filters, then go back and say, fix a spelling error. Sorry, you just lost the last 15 minutes' worth of work)
- good scaling tools (redraw issues make scaling tricky in The Gimp)
- organization - focus/clutter is a big problem with The Gimp. I generally hate MDI apps, but at least Photoshop is organized and I don't have to hunt for windows

With that said, I use The Gimp all the time, but anxiously await a Linux release of the Adobe CS.

I sympathize with the original poster in this thread. The Gimp is an exercise in poor UI design and is incredibly frustrating to work with. I have yet to find a good alternative - I dual-boot with Win98 specifically so that I can do proper image editing from time to time.

How long will we be waiting?.....

I'm a dual-booter. The only things that take me back to Windows are Photoshop and Quicken---and there's no good reason for the latter--except I'm too lazy to learn Gnucash...
I have used PS up to v6 with CrossOver Office, but could not get CS to work.

For many things, GIMP is just fine. My real hangup is that I know PS so well that it actually makes GIMP harder to learn.

Haha! Thanks. I dual boot as well for a few reasons and that is one of them. I'm a PS guru and absolutely love it. Heh, the only thing I do like is on the fly editing with the command line. lol! Sometimes I just want to border some of the photographs I've taken and I can throw a border on real quick. But other than that the UI completely sucks.

I agree with you about the gimps design. The interface is really awful and results in a lot of clutter on the desktop when working with multiple images. I have started developing websites after a long long break and I am finding it really frustrating working with the GIMP. I am seriously considering getting a mac so that I can run Photoshop and other graphics apps.