Years ago I used Paintshop Pro as a lightweight alternative to Photoshop, then I got turned to Photoshop (I had a legit copy of version 2!) but later abandoned it for other programs such as paint.net. Unfortunately, that application never quite cut the mustard in terms of creating masks nor feathering selections
So, I started to look for an alternative and discovered that PSP had been resurrected and is now sold by Corel as version X9, so I gave that a try and so far does what I need it to do with none of the massive CPU and RAM overhead of Photoshop and it starts within seconds rather than taking a minute…
I found a discount code online and given that they’re also having a sale, I think it came up at fifty quid, which is a fraction of the price of the latest full version of Photoshop. PS purists will scoff and open source purists will also scoff…but hey, horses for courses and who needs a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Oh, and the download came with several freebies, such as brushes and frames, quick photo fix tools and lots of other usable stuff.