I used Photoshop for over 30 years. I retired, and have no reason to pay for Photoshop now, so I use GIMP for the few personal projects I do. It works fine. The interface takes some adjustment, but it does all of the basic tasks that Photoshop does, which is all I want.

Seems like it takes more steps for the same tasks. I wonder if that is because Adobe owns patents on some things?

Inkscape is good too, and continues to improve. I’ll mention one, very underappreciated feature it shares with Corel Draw, that Adobe explicitly refuses to implement in Illustrator: marquee selecting objects by either touching, or enclosing. Illustrator selects only by touching. Years ago, I asked and got a response, not a reason, just a response that they would never do it. It’s important because that one simple change makes layers mostly optional for most vector drawings–which makes drawing faster, not needing to manage layers. The biggest need for layers comes from not being able to select by enclosing, instead of touching. It’s the little things you figure out after years of use.