[blagie]

Virtually all the free alternatives to Photoshop are similar to 1995-2000 era Photoshop. In that era, gimp and Photoshop were neck-and-neck, with gimp missing color models and deep color.

Photoshop from that era was pretty simple and easy-to-write. It worked well, and so did the alternatives. Adobe invested an incredible amount into research to build a more serious moat around 2022-era Photoshop.