[doublerabbit]

Meanwhile, my mother uses photoshop and illustrator, she can't afford the ever increasing price of subscription services. She's in her 70's.

It a distraught for her to think of losing access to her creatively outlet if she was to unable to afford the current subscription model.

Subscriptions should be followed up with a perpetual license. She's just glad she forked out on CS2 when it was DVD based.

[methodical]

Have you ever looked at Affinity (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/)? I bought their universal license a year or so ago and would definitely recommend it over Adobe for anybody who doesn't necessarily need to use Adobe, it's a lifetime license and the product is pretty comparable to Photoshop/Illustrator for whatever a hobbyist could need. I would strongly recommend giving them a look if you haven't already.

[doublerabbit]

Thanks for the recommendation, I've not.

Although as lovely as it would be. Sadly me knowing my mother she'd tell me its wonderful, use it once and go back to her old ways and keep telling me otherwise.

She has her system of plugging in her digital camera, scanner for her prints and then work for hours.

When windows 11 decided to update itself on her machine, it really threw her in to a spin. Luckily she was within the Ten Day "don't like" uninstall limit. That was my latest fiasco.

[mh-]

Just be aware: the workflow is entirely different for someone with a lot of Photoshop or Illustrator muscle memory. I couldn't figure out how to do a lot of stuff without googling (and then frequently still).

[LorenPechtel]

What I like are the models that are subscription for update.