bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
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I don't want every dick and Jane grabbing a cheap software and claiming they can "photoshop this" or "illustrate that". It ruins the already overcrowded industry. If you can't afford the software, oh well. Leave it to the people that invested in school or busted tail to aquire the software and truly learn the tools...
May I enter this mildly entertaining chunk of bilge in an upcoming tortured reasoning competition, perhaps in the cart before the horse division?
A craftsman can use most anything at hand to good effect, from bloated over-hyped and overpriced software to a finger dipped in gorilla snot painting on a window.
If you really think that you cannot be effective unless you have whatever software you think is the top of the line then this would be prima facie evidence that you are a practicing hack. Tools do not make a professional in this or any other business. Skill and ability do. You can go to all the right schools and own all the right tackle and you're still a hack. Conversely you can have native ability and do journeyman work without either the schools or the high priced gear.
Just like you can go to schools and study music, learn all the notes, learn all the chord progressions, get a musical instrument and learn to operate it, but none of that is any indicator that you can make music. Doing music is much like professional design work and write commercial grade software, at the b9ttom line either you can do it or you can't. If you can't then regardless of education and equpage, you'll never be able to. But if you can, then education and artifacts are icing on the cake, you can do it with or without them.