[acdha]

It depends on how quickly they add things which matter to you. The break-even point for their pricing was a little over a year – e.g. Lightroom used to cost $150 new / $80 for upgrades and it's $10/month so if they are regularly shipping improvements you want the subscription is a good deal but if it's fluff or support for hardware you don't have you're still paying.

[opencl]

The $10/month gives you both Lightroom and Photoshop though. Photoshop was $700 with $200 upgrades.

Of course they don't give you a cheaper way to only buy Lightroom which is the annoying part.

[acdha]

Yeah, that was basically my point: if you actually use most of what you get it's a good deal. If your usage has been stable for awhile you're probably overpaying for the possibility that your usage will change.

[tsunamifury]

Photoshop is a steaming pile though

[andybak]

There's plenty of valid criticisms you can make of Photoshop but it's still an astonishing bit of software in many regards.

So - no.

[pzone]

There is no other software that even approaches Photoshop's featureset and ecosystem.

[copperx]

TeX may beat it in terms of features, add-ons, and community.