I got my first DSLR camera, a Canon EOS Rebel T6 and am wondering about trying some photo editing software. I need something simple and understandable cuz God knows I ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Seems like a lot of choices out there, what to do, what to do. Any advice?
Gimp sucks. Like a bunch of little fragmented programs. I'm something of an image-processing expert and would recommend you try Olympus MASTER 2. It's free as well. You can try Gimp too, but I use software costing up to thousands of dollars (Corel, MatLAB, LabView, etc.) and unless you have sophisticated needs (and it doesn't sound like you do), I think Olympus MASTER will work great for you. Very easy and intuitive to use.
Olympus Master (Windows)