I swear, Creative Cloud was the worst thing ever to happen for Photoshop. I'm extremely lucky a little voice in my head said "get CS6 while you're still in grad school and can take advantage of the student discount!" Because that was the last version they released that didn't have to deal with the bogus Creative Cloud subscription madness.

I've heard Affinity Photo is a worthwhile alternative to Photoshop, but that's only what I've heard from word of mouth. I've never actually tried it myself. I checked out a video on it and it does seem very similar, but yeah, if Adobe were to pull some shenanigans and somehow block my ability to use my CS6 version, I would definitely put Affinity at the top of my list for alternative considerations. And from what I've read, it's only $50, which is a heck of a lot better than what Adobe expects out of your wallet.