I had been waiting for a Photoshop / GIMP replacement for years, it seems that the GIMP developers dug themselves in a hole a while back with babl and GEGL and a number of good alternatives have cropped up in the meantime. My first problem with GEGL is that it seems to be the only way to reliably crash GIMP, and my second problem is that it doesn't serve to make any discernible workflow easier.

A nice workflow for photo editing involves conversion to 16-bit Lab, layers with various blending modes, and transfer curves. Due to the size of Lab, 8 bits are not enough and cause noticeable banding. Photoshop could do this back in the late 90s. According to this article, GIMP developers think the workflow is "wrong".

It's a good thing that we have Krita.