Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop works on pixels, which suits photographic jobs like cutting a subject out of a frame grab, building a composite background and setting large display type over it. Layers, masks and adjustment layers mean nothing gets destroyed as you work, so a thumbnail can be revised at any point and a saved file becomes the template for the next twenty.

It is a subscription, and the alternatives are real. Photopea runs in a browser and opens PSD files, Affinity Photo is a one-off purchase, GIMP is free, Canva is quicker for anyone who wants a layout without the machinery.