what about Gimp and Inkscape for alternatives? Both are free software.
Gimp - Raster Graphics - http://www.gimp.org/ Inkscape - Vector Graphics - http://inkscape.org/
Gimp - Raster Graphics - http://www.gimp.org/ Inkscape - Vector Graphics - http://inkscape.org/
But, it's primary advantages (open source, powerful) are what have led to its limited use. Like many open source projects, the interface is designed pragmatically, like emacs or vi, but this is a problem -- no professional has the time or the money to learn a complex UI.
The same goes for LibreOffice. Extremely powerful with a ton of untapped potential, but untapped nevertheless due to a dated and unintuitive UI. Inkscape and Scribus are better in this regard, and I've seen many professionals use them with outstanding results.
I've been able to create vectors with Inkscape without much difficulty. I can't say the same about Gimp. If someone really had the time and the dedication, they could re-engineer the entire frontend of Gimp from scratch for each platform, while leaving the excellent backend in place, but I doubt any sane individual would be able to do so without the help of the original developers due to the lack of full documentation available.
Still, it's worth trying. It's got 90% of the features of Ps but with 100% fewer dollars paid for it.
The education system (at least here in Australia) heavily focuses on Adobe and Microsoft products, so high school kids are familiar with them from a youngish age. If they were taught general principles of word processing or photo editing, perhaps with a few different programs, then I feel that everybody would be better able to cope with different UI's much more easily.
Incidentally, (as a non-professional) I found Gimp much easier to grok than Inkscape or Scribus (coming from a Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign education/background).
One might be able to say the same thing of PS, but it has the weight of history and industry acceptance behind it.
Also, the name is not liable to cause embarrassment in some circles. At least PS is a marketable name.
But mostly it's that UI.
Honestly, I've used both for about as long as each other, I find both to be equally annoying to use. Much prefer to use Inkscape or Fireworks, but fireworks doesn't come installable as a Deb and doesn't work natively on a Linux based Operating System so I don't care for it.