Gimp has the ability to set the tools you want to see these days. it's pretty handy. you can also organize and dock them. it's all in the book.
In the book that I don't have :wink: I will give it another go though, since it sounds much improved from when I tried, and with GimpShop it should be even better.
Adobe does overcharge, but when a program is "industry standard" and is as freaking awesome as PS is (first of its kind and all that), it can pretty much set the price whatever it wants. They
know they are commonly pirated.. but one person paying for it more than covers a dozen copies. The same happens with AutoCAD, prohibitively expensive, but still basically required.