Good free image editing program for the laptop?

Question is in the title.

Please honestly free, without fooling

Of course it also depends a little on what you want to do in the end. Whether you are To draw or to edit photos. I can recommend Krita, which should be similar to Photoshop. Most of the time I worked with Gimp and a little bit with Photoshop. In my opinion, the interface of Krita is best understood and still offers all the necessary options. Krita is relatively new, so I do not know if there are many tutorials. Both Gimp and Krita are free and can be downloaded on their own websites:

https://krita.org/en/

https://www.gimp.org/....gimp.org/

I do not know Krita, but I see that it is also available as a portable version
https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/krita-portable
it is not installed on the PC and can easily be deleted after testing if it does not like it.

This is not your question, but consider the following:
Image editing only makes sense if you see the colors as they really are.
If you see the colors wrong on your laptop display, then your image editing result is just botched.
Before the image processing, try out the viewing angles of your display. So, if the colors change for you, if you look at it diagonally. If your laptop is not looking good, then let it be better with the image editing on it, that's nothing.

If you have an eye-good display, then you should check once the settings whether your laptop is synonymous not set to greater contrast and readability or something, then calibrate your display so that it has no color cast, and then you can with start the image editing.

Since I'm already testing Krita mentioned - one is very often advertised as a PS alternative - I'll get in touch with you here, too.

Photoshop Similarity: That's relative. Admittedly, I'm not really sure about the suitability of Krita as an image editor [from the perspective of a composer].

Since I had Photoshop for two years, I may have been so "spoiled" that I can't be happy with another program… Therefore, after I dropped PS, I also switched to the VFX section, where you were still accompanying an image editing software needs, but the requirements are nowhere near as high… Limited to me almost exclusively on cropping of subjects.

In my view, the focus of Krita is on drawing, but there are elements there that can be assigned to the classic image editing.

What I really cool about the part: It has layer-style, what the classic GIMP still miss and the operation is better than GIMP and that by a long way… A few things are already reminiscent of Photoshop…

I find some things there but also extremely unfamiliar.

In terms of functionality is in the things much more in it than it seems at first, I think there's not much missing in comparison to GIMP, at least in terms of the absolute amount of functions.

Conclusion: Krita has the better operation, is more logical in the structure [from the perspective of an EX - Photoshoppers] and makes something visually. The focus is on drawing. As far as I know you should be able to animate with the part… But I'm still not penetrated.

GIMP has the focus on image editing and compared to a few years ago, the operation has become better [and the interface is finally dark by default], but I still find it in the operation k * ck.

Now depends very much on what you want to do.