Wow! That's some transformation :) so the first one was done with Photoshop. I've only used gimp but I only used it for really simple diagrams and such. Curious to see what you will be able to do with it. And hmm... This chain could use a few photoshop battles.
I would so join an Photoshop battle :D
I should be able to do almost everything I could in Photoshop... Time will tell :-) Thanks for the response @eonwarped!