Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements??

[Richard Lundberg]

I agree, that is A LOT of money up-front to pay for a product and in that instance CC may be the better option. However, I can buy Lightroom for $79 here in the US and Photoshop Elements for $119. So for around $200 I can have both products indefinitely. I don't plan on purchasing every update of the stand alone software either. If I were to try LR and PS with CC for a year at $10, that's $120, so about a $60 difference, which wouldn't take to long to recover. But I would be making a continuous $120 commitment each year (or more depending on price changes). That does not appeal to me at this time. If I become a successful professional photographer with a consistent stream of income from a photo business my thoughts may change. But for right now, as a hobbyist/enthusiast, it's difficult for me to justify the monthly commitment.

You can get Elements 12 and Premiere Elements 12 for 114. Elements alone is about 60 bucks.

[jcuknz]

As I skip through this interminable thread on the pro's and con's of Adobe products I reflect that I have been perfectly happy with Corel's Paint Shop Pro which the latest version cost me under $100 to purchase and one copy I bought for $15 in the States on Amazon for my notebook which I found to be little different to what I had back home on my desktop ... it is a full blown editor in the Photoshop ability class.

I note that Colin put it very well when saying people with limited needs find LR quite adequate whereas others who do more with their photographs find they need Photoshop or in my case PSP. As to if we need to do more is opinion.

On the update question I have had over the years versions 7AE, then 8, next Xor 10, followed by 14 with 13 later bought for my notebook, and currently 16 so you do not have to update for every version if you do not want to and usually these days the improvements are marginal and marketing changes ... with PSP I rate 8 and 16 as bringing me the most useful new tools

If you believe you might at some stage become a professional then it is probably desirable that you go with Adobe but otherwise there are lots of competing products depending on what you want to do in photography.
Personally I am so used to PSP I cannot be bothered learning a new 'language' such as Adobe speak.

If you have a Mac computer forget PSP , doesn't work on Mac, thankfully I am with Windows

[Colin Southern]

Lightroom is a fine program and I have found I can be very effective with it. I have started up the excessively steep Photoshop learning curve a number of times and found that for most things I do not need to keep going up that curve. Products like Lightroom and (dare I say it and add to the controversy?) Aperture work quickly, efficiently & produce excellent results.

People who say in effect that Photoshop's learning curve is steeper than Lightroom's aren't comparing apples with apples.

In essence, Photoshop has Lightroom's image editing capabilities built into it's ACR plugin, and editing saturation, brightness, clarity etc in ACR is no harder or easier than doing it in LR - in both cases it's just a slider with the same name attached to it that produces the same result.

So if someone is on the "steep Photoshop learning curve" - if they're following best practice - it's only because they're doing pixel-based editing that LR (and ACR) are incapable of doing. In which case saying that Photoshop has a steep learning curve compared to LR isn't a fair comparison. Put another way, if one wants to limit PS to just the use of ACR then it'll have the same image editing capability as LR, in essence. If one wants to do more than LR or ACR can do (eg use a content aware fill to remove an undesired object or increase the size of a models eyes by 7%) then yes - there is going to be a learning curve attached to that.

All in all though, I think people create a rod for their own backs with their perception of Photoshop - it's a REALLY BIG toolbox, but nothing says that you need to know each and every tool to get a job done. I probably use only 5% of it's capability 95% of the time. The basics aren't hard at all - any good book or tutorial will get someone well on their way.