TBH I would seriouly look at Photoshop Elements, it is a great piece of software, fairly intuitive to use and also the standard most magazines and websites adopt for tutorials. I have played with the GIMP myself and found it pretty frustrating and confusing to use infact a colleague of mine told me it reduced her to tears
You can get a 30 day trial version of Elements off Adobes website
here just click the try button on the right handside under Photoshop Elements 10.
Of course that is just my opinion
