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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BackdoorArts" data-source="post: 400347" data-attributes="member: 9240">In the long term, assuming that you will continue to grow as a photographer, yes.  A lot of people don't agree with me, but I look at it this way...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lightroom 5 has been around for 2 years now, and is due for a new version (which may include layer functions like Photoshop), so if you buy LR5 now, it will likely be outdated in the next 6-8 months (my guess - no inside info).  This should also be purchasable, but if you buy LR5 then it will be an upgrade, which tends to run $75-99. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">LR5 currently has a retail price of around $140, with discounts available with camera purchases and educational editions, so figure purchasing it will run $75-140. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Creative Cloud subscription of $10/month means that you will only stand the chance to "lose money" if you use LR5 for more than purchase price / 10 months without using Photoshop, and without any new release of Lightroom coming out. </li> </ul>OK, so if you move on to Photoshop, which is no longer available for purchase and has gone through 2 significant feature upgrades since CS6 (the last purchasable version - now very expensive, if you can find it), or if a new version of Lightroom is released, you're guaranteed to be ahead of the game financially with the subscription program for 8 to potentially 30 months (the minimum number of months you'd need to justify the purchase price of LR5 and the Student/Teacher edition of CS6).  But in that time you'll get every new feature and function, and every incremental release at no additional cost.  The only way I can see you ever losing out is if you decide that all current functionality is all you'll ever need, but you can't cancel and just retain that functionality because when you stop paying it stops working, which is really only an issue (in my mind) if you decide that your life as a photographer isn't what you thought, but you'd still like to have something around for the occasional photo.  If you see this having a very high probability then by all means buy a retail version of Lightroom, because it'll always be with you.  But buy it as cheap as possible, and don't upgrade when the next version comes out, simply start the Creative Cloud subscription with the next major LR release, because you can always fall back to LR5 when you quit (or some other version of free software available at that time), and you'll always have the catalog management functions.</blockquote>

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