Gimp Hits 2.0
jf writes "Gimp 2.0 released! From gimp.org: "This release is a major event, marking the end of a three year development cycle by a group of volunteers and enthusiasts who have made this the most professional release of the GIMP ever. It is the first stable release that is officially supported not only on Unix-based operating systems, but also on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X." Get it from ftp.gimp.org or from the mirror sites."
Ummm. I do it the same way in Photoshop and the Gimp. I make a nice square path, set the fill and the stroke. I'm not seeing your particular issue here. And for professional graphics (I don't mean drawing horns on pictures of your sister) it's quite flexible. It can be scripted in umpteen languages that are a lot more straightforward than actions and such. It's pretty great at photo editing and I might even say better for certain drawing tasks. Font support in Gimp 2 is finally up to my standards (ie I can now use all those True Type fonts I made and payed all kinds of money for, and they look nice).
And Fireworks a professional image package??? Please. What profession are you speaking of? It's horrible for print design, terrible for image editing and photo manipulation, and only seems to excel at making animated GIFs. I mean I switch between Illustrator and Photoshop regularly, but Fireworks performs the jobs of both very poorly. Honestly I think I'd be better with Photoshop or the GIMP alone than Fireworks.
And I won't claim that I'm fully a GIMP convert. Really Photoshop and Illustrator are the reasons I still have a Windows box handy. Really when it comes down to it, I use Photoshop because I use Illustrator and when Sodipodi or whatever has a decent path tool and fills out featurewise a little more, I'll probably go ahead and free myself of paying a crapload of money every couple years for a prettier version of the same thing. (I'm still holding out on the Adobe CS package or whatever its called).