Originally posted by raz-0 What I don't understand is how anyone arrives at the conclusion that because they are using lightroom or aperture in their workflow that it is cheap. They both have post processing pipelines that are well over $1000, and closer to $2000. They also both have software in them that has had the upgrade window shrink from 4 versions to 2 or less. So you are looking at expensive workflows with high maintenance costs.
Is it inappropriate to their work? Definitely not, feature for feature, the price difference between what they chose and anything else that would work as well is probably a few hundred bucks total. Is it cheap though? Defintiely not.
You are seeing this, I assume, from a amateur perspective. What the heck is the problem with a 2 kUSD investment in your business? Any plumber needs tools, which cost probaly much more, because he can't use tools from the discount warehouse, if he wants to sustain his business.
Any company car will cost you ten or twenty times as much and its maintenance cost p.a. will be higher than the software investment.
I use LR and the whole Adobe Design Suite, incl. PS etc. It is expensive - but not seen as a professional tool. A good lens will cost as much as the whole software package, my car is more expensive etc. - and the whole investment is tax deducable anyway. I have tried amany, many cheaper options, to reduce my running costs. In some areas free alternatives are viable (OpenOffice for instance, instead of MS Office), in other areas, the free alternatives lack the last pro-feature, I need, may it be 4C support, or lack of colour management or whatever. And usually they are just a waste of time.
Yes, pure amateur photgs may not need 4C. That's fine, don't buy it, but if used as a necessary tool, there is simply no alternative on the market, ans especially not a cheaper one.
By the way: Aldus Digital Darkroom, the predecessor of Photoshop, was available for Mac, long before anybody even thought about using Windows for image processing. This history is part of the strength Macs have in the pro market.
Ben