Agreed, Kaveman! That's the way it use to be for a long time until the bigger companies like Corel & especially Adobe bought all of these independent companies up. Before a company called Macromedia was bought up by Adobe I believe, there was a program/software named "Freehand." It not only challenged Adobe's Illustrator, in many ways it was better than. Even if you still had a old copy, it wouldn't run on any modern operating system. Google it though. Even today, it's still very much remembered and fondly thought of.

ProCreate (wish they made for Windows also and it will probably be it's eventual down fall for not being available on Windows), has done such a great job that Adobe considers it a threat. They refused to be bought out by Adobe, so Adobe made Fresco (which will come to Windows soon). It's actually very, very good. I hope Ambient Design also takes notice and raises Artrage to a new level come their 7th version.

I mention this all to my students as well. All though I encourage them to at least try other software makers, they have to know how to know Adobe if they are planning a career in Art/Design. I refuse to subscribe to Adobe as well. My CS6 suite still works just fine, though I do have access to CC, via my college, since I teach Photoshop and how many methods can be applied to other software like Serif's Affinity software as an example. That said, you do have know Adobe if again, you're planning a career in art/design. Have to. It's the industry standard and most studios use Adobe. Adobe has a serious strangle hold on the Digital Art Design World and much more these days with their servers.

Speaking of subscriptions... I begged people to refuse the subscription model. I warned them this is what would happen (Adobe's stranglehold). However at the time, people thought it was great. They didn't have to shell out 3 hundred or more for just Photoshop. Some people say high insight is 20/20. I say just read a history book. People make the same mistakes over and over. Furthermore, just because you can do something, mos people don't think of the more important question of: "should they do it." Ethics 101.

Btw... What version of painter do you have that's crashing? Prior 2019, Painter does need some serious hardware to run smoothly. Even though I rarely do anymore 3D work or rendering, my next rig will still have at minimum a i7 (or rather the AMD equivalent or better). A Quadro or top end gaming card and 32GB of Ram (I prefer 64GB sooner or later). I almost exclusively paint commissioned oil painting portraits, digitally now. The likeness is still draw freehand (line art, sometimes copic makers in grey are used), which is scanned at 600 to 1200 PPI (again, piece pending). A 18' by 24' working space with, a standard 300 PPI (more often than not I work at 4-600 PPI for commissioned pieces), "requires the hardware," to back it up. I very well may use Artrage in the future on some pieces and probably still use Painter for some touch ups. Regardless of Artrage or Painter or whatever software used... again, you need some decent hardware, to have some very large brushes work and move as smoothly; smoohly as if you were digitally painting something for the Web at 72 and 5" by 7"

- Food for thought mates.