I want to use blender and I'm sure they would get a lot more acceptance if they fix the one thing people have been complaining about for YEARS! That's great for your son but no credible agency will use GIMP. Krita is awesome and I love it and comes the closest to an open source alternative to PS, it is much better than GIMP in everyway and is actually usable.
Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said.
Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.
Would you mind elaborating on what complaints you mean? Blender has had multiple major UI overhauls in the past few years, and changed a lot of basic command assignments in the process. They even moved selection from the right mouse button to the left button. That was the #1 complaint I used to hear all the time from everyone, and it was resolved a couple years ago. So I’m very curious what you’re referring to, and whether you’ve used it recently.
The industry complains plenty about Adobe cloud and the lock in of their products. They strongly need a competitor. Pipelining is a problem because designers rarely are experts for digital formats, but when more people switch, this is a temporary inconvenience.
Unfortunately the industry doesn't care if he doesn't care about photoshop, it cares about it and if he wants to be a part of it he should start learning to care unless his work is beyond amazing and he will only be freelancing then ignore everything I said.
Photoshop is not impressive but it gets the job done quickly and smoothly with minimal friction and that's why it is number one.