[raxxorraxor]

Easily Gimp and Krita or painting (you can buy the latter on steam, if you want to support open source).

Photoshop is a round and mature product, but since I don't do any print, I can do everything with Gimp (perhaps you can do print too, no experience here).

Creative cloud or however it is called today is a non-starter for me. Also, I can integrate Gimp in image pipelines more easily. I also use Blender for modelling.

Maybe I am not entirely up to date, but today you can use these tools to make things that were just not possible a few years ago. In a quality that is competitive with high quality media products.

For me it is a hobby and I get the advantages in a professional environment to use the same tools that fit long and complicated pipelines. But if you just want to create high quality art, the tooling is readily available.