I'm told, though, that it's not as easy to use as PS
When Adobe switched to the subscription model, lots of people moaned, groaned, threatened mutiny and generally made a lot of mountains out of very small molehills.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say. Adobe didn't suffer a loss in sales, infact quite the opposite, they've even seen a modest increase....
Why ? Because when it comes to publishing and graphic design, Adobe is the mutts nuts.
They've been at it a lot longer than everybody else (since 1988), after years of development and refinement they've now got a very mature product, anyone remotely worth employing in publishing or graphic design will know Adobe products inside out, all the printers know Adobe inside out.
It would take a lot of time, money and effort to displace Adobe's flagship publishing and design products (Acrobat, Illustrator and Photoshop). And now Adobe have done a stunning job of displacing the old publishing flagship Quark with Adobe Indesign..... so its basically hat-trick, game set & match to Adobe !
Coming back to photography, both Photoshop and Lightroom are very, very good....and although Lightroom has its competitors, I've yet to see anything that comes anywhere near Photoshop in terms of power, usability and stability.
Realistically, GIMP is not a Photoshop replacement.... well, not unless you're comparing GIMP to a legacy version of Photoshop from the 80's ....
