[kiddo]

I'd like to invest in a software program of some kind for photo manipulation, enlargements, etc, but hear so many bad stories about how difficult Adobe Photoshop programs are to learn, but do know you can do tons of things with this program. Any suggestions as far as software would be so beneficial; I have years of photography experience, but not with software programs. Wanting to learn so when I shoot weddings my backup photographer and I can learn this together.

[eonb]

I've got both Photoshop Elements, some Corel stuff and Lightroom. 95% of what I do involves image manipulation in Lightroom. Personally, I think it is an excellent piece of software, doing most of what I want most of the time. If you're just wanting to do fairly simple "fixups" and manage your files well, I'd recommend it. There's also a 30 day free trial available from Adobe as well so you can try before you buy in this case. Google Picasa will also do some basic image manipulation as well and if free!

[Miguel]

eonb's advice is very good. You will want to combine Lightroom with Elements eventually as the latter offers greater pixel pushing capabilities. LR should meet 90% of your needs once you figure it out. As a wedding shooter LR is very beneficial as it lets you process a large number of images at once fairly quickly. You can paste in the white balance from a good sample shot so that it can apply to others of its ilk, not to mention any other post processing value.

Allow a full 30 days to test it out as there is a learning curve. If you have a Mac, also consider Aperture which is very similar and just as good.

M

[Buschmaster]

I'd prefer Aperture to Lightroom, but frankly, they're about the same and it will just come down to which you like the "feel" of better.

Photoshop itself is probably overpowering for just straight image manipulation, at least as a starting point. Lightroom/Aperture could handle much of your needs better, I would guess.

[mike.hiran]

I've just discovered Onone's Perfect Photo Suite 7 and I'm pretty impressed with it. I don't think it will replace lightroom 4 for me (it actually works as a plug in for it), but it allows for great b&w conversions, excellent masking tools, good portrait touchups that are fast and intuitive (way better than lightroom), and pretty cool resizing/enlarging options of photos using genuine fractals. I have photoshop cs5 but I haven't spent as much time as I should to learn to use it. The thing about Perfect Photo Suite 7 that I like is that the learning curve is very short - it has similar sliders as lightroom and even the menu system seems similar. There were a couple people talking about this program at a photography meetup so I tried it... so far, I think it will be a great addition to my existing workflow.

[SpecialK]

There really are the same answers to this often-asked question in this sub forum. You just have to look for the threads with a large number of replies. Nothing has changed in the last week :-) Elements 9 here. Easy enough, more than enough.

[gjtoth]

Have a look at Zoner Photo Studio. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. http://www.zoner.com



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