Teaching Myself New Tricks With The GIMP

I've been using the Linux flavor of the GIMP to prepare photographs for my Web pages and this web log. I don't really know how to use it, and I don't know the first thing about Photoshop, so I'm a completely naive user. In theory, this should make it easier, because I don't have to "unlearn" anything. In practice, however, I have some expectations based on my ancient experience with MacDraw, and I spent about a couple of hours last weekend trying to make a little arrow and paste it over the top of a photo. I couldn't do it. That was when I decided to actually learn the GIMP. Here are some links I found promising.

• The GIMP. "The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."
• Gimp-Savvy.Com This Web site is a keeper. Besides the book (item below), there is an archive of copyright-free photos.
• Grokking the Gimp is an intermediate/advanced guide written by Carey Bunks and published by New Riders. It is available in its entirety on this web site under an open publication license, both as html and as a tarball. You can also order the ink and paper book. The online version comes complete with an interactive searchable database.
• GimpTalk.com: Ultimate GIMP Resource center and community forum "GT (GimpTalk.com) was formed in Dec 2004, in a hope that it will help the gimp users and will provide quality tutorials & resources, along with a good community forum where gimp users can discuss/help each other. Site is currently maintained by Ali Imran (CEO GimpTalk)." Tons of tutorials.
• Gimp Users Group "Welcome to the, by far, largest collection of Gimp arts and tutorials anywhere on the Internet! Right now our galleries contain 2571 pictures, 220 textures, and we have 214 members! Further, we offer 18 Script-Fu scripts."
• The Gimp Tutorials Pointer Page "This page is to help not only to find a particular tutorial, but also to promote the creation of more tutorials as well as providing an easy index to some examples of what the GIMP can do for you."
• GIMPguru.org "is a resource for those using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) to edit photographs. Please check out our comprehensive suite of image editing tutorials."