After Processing Software?

I use Lightroom . Bit of a learning curve, but it doesn't take long to figure out the basics, then learn as you go. Lots of great tutorials as well online.

The present Photoshop and Lightroom $10.00/month subscription fee with free updates is really the best bargain around these days. If you want to do some serious post processing, you might as well start and learn the real thing first. These are the two programs I'd recommend to start with. You can also get Google Nik plug-ins that will work with the above mentioned softwares.

With these, you're good to go.

I'm not crazy about subscription things, but if you're on a budget, or just want to try out things, I think it's fine.

Found Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 for $135. What's confusing is all the options. Is Lightroom 5 a stand alone software and is anyone familiar with tis one? Or, is there another option. Sorry for all the questions.

Lightroom is standalone. They're currently on version 5.5, which you could automatically upgrade to from the base 5. I suspect version 6 is likely due out in the next year, but for what you're looking for you may not need to upgrade immediately. That said, the $135 you're paying for Lightroom will get you Lightroom and Photoshop for a year. You may not want or need Photoshop initially, but say 10 months down the road you want to try HDR, or focus stacking, or merging multiple exposures - you cannot do that in LR 5. You won't have to pay a dime extra to do it in Photoshop. And, if there's an upgrade, that's free.

The only drawback on the subscription service is that if you stop paying you lose access to the software in short order. So, if you decide down the road that photography is just an occasional thing, and you're only working on it once in a while, then having the software on your computer is a nice to have. For me, any way I've done the math, for anyone who will be taking pictures for the next two years and more, if you have $0 invested in software right now then it makes no sense to buy Photoshop or Lightroom now. I own both LR5 and CS6 and am on the subscription service because of what has been added to Photoshop CC and CC 2104 that I cannot get as an upgrade to CS6.

The price you found is the going rate for LR. If you have a student or teacher in the family, take advantage of the discount and get the Educational edition for about $75 - it's the version I have. You can always go on the CC subscription service any time you need to. Otherwise, jump on the subscription and buy the latest version of LR if you want and need to when you decide to cancel as it's supposedly going to exist as a standalone for the foreseeable future.

Photoshop Elements has a lot of features of Photoshop plus it allows RAW processing. It's what I started to use first before I added Lightroom 3. Then I upgraded my version of Photoshop Elements a couple of times plus upgraded Lightroom 3 to LR4. Now that I regularly edit, I subscribe to Photoshop CC for the $10 per month.

The latest version of Photoshop Elements is 12. It tends to get a new version released annually which means late fall the next one should be due. As for buying the full version of Lightroom, once you pay the full price the first time, they allow you to purchase a newer version for an upgrade price...not another full price. So if you upgrade annually, it's around $75-$79 for LR. As BackdoorHippie said, you don't need to upgrade every year although the option to do so has been there. You can skip a year and still get the upgrade price.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 for Mac and Windows (Box) 65225054

I have a brand new, unopened box of PSE 12 that I will be posting for sale as well as this book:
Amazon.com: Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop Elements 12 (9781118729212): Mike Wooldridge: Books

If you are interested, I can take a photo of them as proof I own them and will sell them as a set for $35--that includes shipping and PayPal CONUS only. Let me know.

If you can not find a student or teacher for a discount, save a link to the Amazon Lightroom product page on your computer (for convenience). Check it EVERYDAY, 2x if you can. I swear they know... and a sale will pop up within a couple of weeks. Maybe its just been my luck or maybe they throw in a quickie sale every month, but its worked several times for me with some big cuts on Adobe products. Meanwhile, you can download the trial. Or go with the subscription. It doesn't sit well with me, but, its at a tempting price. Either way, download the trial and see what you think. Check out the Adobe TV videos. Products | Lightroom | Adobe TV Also many videos on youtube to help you along.

I use LR and PS Elements. Mainly LR.

nickt said:

If you can not find a student or teacher for a discount, save a link to the Amazon Lightroom product page on your computer (for convenience). Check it EVERYDAY, 2x if you can. I swear they know... and a sale will pop up within a couple of weeks. Maybe its just been my luck or maybe they throw in a quickie sale every month, but its worked several times for me with some big cuts on Adobe products. Meanwhile, you can download the trial. Or go with the subscription. It doesn't sit well with me, but, its at a tempting price. Either way, download the trial and see what you think. Check out the Adobe TV videos. Products | Lightroom | Adobe TV Also many videos on youtube to help you along.

I use LR and PS Elements. Mainly LR.

Click to expand...

Nick, have you ever used Camel Camel Camel to track Amazon's prices? When I am looking for something, I will paste Amazon's url for the item into their search bar and pull up the info:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 | Amazon price tracker / tracking, Amazon price history charts, Amazon price watches, Amazon price drop alerts | camelcamelcamel.com

On that page I can subscribe to the item by plugging in a price for which I am hoping to buy then I add my email address to be notified immediately. Sometimes an item is only listed for an hour or two during a Lightning sale, but I've managed to snag a few things I've wanted.

I have used Adobe Elements - it's good. Affordable - and at least the last time I checked you can buy it outright without this silly subscription thing. For those of us country folk on rural internet cloud based stuff don't work for us. And they don't care with most of the world racing with the rats in the urban jungle vendors don't worry about country folk. Even find some on-line vendors will not ship to a rural post office box - sad.

ANYWAY - after a year or so in Elements I converted to Corel Paintshop Pro X6 and have not looked back. Affordable, you can download free trial and see yourself. Does layers, masks, HDR, the whole nine yards. And it is 64 Bit. Fully compatible with Windows 8 (which was an issue for me with Elements - maybe latest version is better). Corel has been in the graphics arts business a long time and is not a flyby night company. I'm just not on this Adobe bandwagon.

Check out the reviews on Paintshop Pro or download the trial.


http://www.paintshoppro.com/en/prod...utm_medium=PSPX6Ult&utm_campaign=PIDredirects

I have also just purchased a Nikon D7100 and I use Photoshop CS6 for editing RAW shots.

I have always used Macromedia Fireworks to edit images with really great results, its far easier to use than PS but PS is much more advanced.

My advice is stick with PS and don't be put off by it's complexity, you will get familiar with it eventually, put YouTube to good use and simply ask what you want to know, for example today I learned how to do a 9 shot panorama in PS and its turned out amazing.

Good luck with it

hark said:

Nick, have you ever used Camel Camel Camel to track Amazon's prices? When I am looking for something, I will paste Amazon's url for the item into their search bar and pull up the info:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 | Amazon price tracker / tracking, Amazon price history charts, Amazon price watches, Amazon price drop alerts | camelcamelcamel.com

On that page I can subscribe to the item by plugging in a price for which I am hoping to buy then I add my email address to be notified immediately. Sometimes an item is only listed for an hour or two during a Lightning sale, but I've managed to snag a few things I've wanted.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll check that out.

Processing Schmossesing.
Just do what Rock Kenwell does. Shoot in Jpeg and get it right in camera the first place.:cheerful:

I went to the Adobe sight today to check prices and products. Every version of Lightroom I could find for download was listed as upgrade rather than the full version. I don't get it. Do I have to buy a boxed disk version from a retailer to get the full version?

I just checked. They sure have buried it. Click on the tiny edit button when you are looking at the upgrade version in your cart. Then a pull-down appears. $13 more than Amazon or B&H. If you are hot to get it, just download the trial and enter the serial number when you eventually buy it somewhere else.

Everyone, thank you very much for all the input. It makes it so much easier to make a decision with your advice. I think I'm going with Adobe Photoshop Elements 12, for Mac. It seems to me moderate on the difficulty scale and is upgradable. It's on Amazon for $65.24 and Best Buy for $69.00, BB does price match so I hope I'm playing around with it this afternoon. Again, thanks very much it was a huge help.