I have a 27inch Imac and use parallels to be able to run my CS5 that I purchased 3 or 4 years ago. I'm trying to decide if I just want to do away with having windows on my Mac and just subscribe to PhotoShop. The only thing I use windows for is CS5. I would like to get my pictures out of IPhoto and organize them with Lightroom but I just don't want to be stuck if I cancel my subscription. I not trying to drive you nuts asking questions but I want to have it clear in my mind that this is what I want to do. Thanks for helping me with my decision.
I'll just toss out a few thought's here because I think we can all sympathize with your situation; photo organization can be tricky and switching organizational gears can be a serious headache. Without taking anything away from Lightroom, the cataloging it does is one of the biggest reasons I
don't use it. I set up my own organizational system that is totally independent of the software I use.
Shots go into into a folder that has a descriptive title (e.g. "Bob's Birthday Party") and the month and year those shot were taken (e.g. February 2014). Inside that folder each shot is renamed with the same general information and sequence number (e.g. Bob's Birthday Party - February 2014 (5), Bob's Birthday Party - February 2014 (6) etc.). Easy peasy and totally independent of any software to keep things organized. Adobe Bridge, which comes part and parcel with the Adobe Photography plan, has tools for tagging, rating, filtering and so forth but does not take control of your images like Lightroom does. There's no importing, no exporting and no catalog to deal with. And if Adobe Bridge were to go away, my organizational structure remains in tact. I may lose some conveniences but that would be the extent of the damage.
Of course moving away from Lightroom means learning Photoshop but if you're competent with Lightroom, learning Photoshop won't be difficult. Learning Photoshop if you're NOT competent with Lightroom would not be difficult but Photoshop has been stigmatized as being difficult to learn when in truth, it's not. It's just not. Learning
everything there is to know about Photoshop would be hard, on that point I agree, but we don't need to do that; we only need to know a tiny sliver of what it can do.
Don't know if anything I've said helps, but there ya go.
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