$600 is larger than most comic cover commissions (source: have been paid to do them), and unfortunately Photoshop is still a standard in many tangential industries that pay far below the minimum I strongly suspect that you assume for many (corporate) graphic designers.
I started creating graphics in high school on the Gimp, which was a natural transition to a (gifted) copy of PSCS2, and I've been using my college version of CS5 ever since afterwards. That route to graphic design would've never happened at their current prices. They're burning a whole generation of designers.
Fifty bucks a month for the whole suite is half of one page of comics posted to my Patreon. And my Patreon is pretty tiny.
Fifty bucks a month is less than I charge for one single-character flat color commission, which is something I can do in an hour or two.
I am not at all surprised that most comic cover gigs pay like shit. Comics generally pay like shit.
And all that said I sure did pirate Illustrator for a decade until I was at the point where paying the full subscription was the easiest route. If I was a broke student now I’d probably be getting into Affinity Designer instead of Illustrator.
I started creating graphics in high school on the Gimp, which was a natural transition to a (gifted) copy of PSCS2, and I've been using my college version of CS5 ever since afterwards. That route to graphic design would've never happened at their current prices. They're burning a whole generation of designers.