I find that the students and new-comers are also benefiting from Creative Cloud because it allows one to try out all the tools unrestricted (and maybe even profiting from work) without having to take out a loan or worry about 30 day trials.<p>> I think Gimp vs. Photoshop is the vim vs. Emacs for digital artists.<p>As a programmer and a hobbyist painter, the analogy should be more like (vim/emacs/sublime) vs MS Notepad. While GIMP is great for general photo manipulation and editing, it is out of Photoshop's league when it comes to painting.