Adobe Photoshop was one of the tools that helped me earn money professionally during my school and college days, so I had a nostalgic relationship with it. Then, I had a good relationship with Adobe in various ways for a long time in the 2000s.
I stopped using such tools long back, but I wanted to keep one handy to remind me of the old days. I found Serif's Affinity[1] to be a good alternative so far. I've been a customer since its beta, and I had to buy once, then an upgrade with their recent v2.0
The other good, light, quick, and easy-to-use alternative is Pixelmator Pro[2]. In the last 4-5 years, I think I have only had to pay for it twice.
> The other good, light, quick, and easy-to-use alternative is Pixelmator Pro
Unless you want, e.g., a destructive crop[0] which they have been not adding for at least 4 years and counting. Since my graphic work generally involves cropping, that kinda rules out Pixelmator Pro for me and forces me back into the Adobe Tax Hole.
[0] There are undoubtedly many other deficiencies but this one really irks me.
Isn't this achieved by enabling the "Delete cropped pixels" option?
From Pixelmator help:
> Select "Delete cropped pixels" to permanently delete the cropped areas of an image or deselect it to crop the image nondestructively and hide the cropped areas of an image instead.
I stopped using such tools long back, but I wanted to keep one handy to remind me of the old days. I found Serif's Affinity[1] to be a good alternative so far. I've been a customer since its beta, and I had to buy once, then an upgrade with their recent v2.0
The other good, light, quick, and easy-to-use alternative is Pixelmator Pro[2]. In the last 4-5 years, I think I have only had to pay for it twice.
1. https://affinity.serif.com/
2. https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/