The alternates I liked aren't complete Photoshop replacements. but then again neither is Gimp? I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
My general workflow is to use Krita and Inkscape (I used Gravit for a while because Inkscape was having some bugs I couldn't cope with), and maybe do some minor final colour correction/grading in Gimp on the final output. I could do all of this without leaving Photoshop. I'm not complaining though, since I much prefer Krita's brush engine than Photoshop, and I've gotten used to Inkscape's quirks. And they're both free!
It's not a matter of self esteem or confidence. If someone does it better, do it even better, or settled for living in their shadow.
The way to doing better is learning from the ones that are good at it already, right?
So why not learn from Adobe, which probably has the largest team of the smartest UX engineers working for them. They're not dominating such a complex market with smoke and mirrors.
And maybe Gimp can learne from Photoshop's mistakes too.
Blender is an excellent example of the process I described above. Their UI/UX was a joke for years, but they tried switching things upe and learned from the competitors. I'd say right now they're better than some (if not all) with of most features in terms of UX, especially for newcomers to the industry. Blender went form the steepest learning curve to one that's easy to get into, and from one of the worst UX/UI designs to one of the most polished in the industry.
It's not about low self esteem at all, it's about bettering yourself (or your project). If anything, that's how you build confidence, in my opinion.
