>>>>A client subscribes to Adobe suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Lightroom, etc...) . They pay a lot of money for this each year. Does anyone recommend alternatives which are effectively as good, or good enough. for non-professional users?
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>>>What are the needs of the client?
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>>Michel, basically this is a school and they use these tools for their students in art, computer-tech, etc. The school licensing fees are very high. But these are not professional users and I wonder whether free tools would suffice just as well ?
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>I agree with Sergey, my understanding is in its raw capabilities GIMP is a serious rival to Photoshop. However I also understand PS has a vastly broader/deeper ecosystem of plug-ins etc. so if these advanced features are needed or wanted then PS is your only choice.
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>But that's just one facet. The Adobe suite also covers illustration, video manipulation etc. I'm pretty sure there are low- or no-cost competitors out there but one would need to assemble a competing "suite" of those products. Would it have equivalent features to the Adobe suite, and offer the possible advantages of an integrated suite such as ease of use, data transfer etc.?
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>What is the real goal of the school? If it's to teach the principles of image/video manipulation to non-professionals then free or low cost products might work well. But if graduates want or are expected to be able to find work in those fields, there's an excellent chance they'll be working with Adobe products, so learning on them in the first place is probably a good idea.
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>Staff at the school might be reluctant to completely rework their curricula to use new products. With Adobe they have a known quantity that is well supported. It could just be something as prosaic as the price of the Adobe subscriptions being less than what it would cost to rejig the curricula.

Thanks Al, Sergey, and All,

Yes the above sort of answer is almost exactly what I have given them :) They will look at GIMP certainly. Thanks everyone.