Let me be clear that if you decide not to add Photoshop to your toolkit, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t serious about your photography - Lightroom is very powerful by itself. I also use Photoshop for creative compositing. I personally take about 5% of my straight photographs to Photoshop to do work I can’t do in Lightroom. (Of course an excellent way to learn them is with my Lightroom Fundamentals & Beyond video series.)Īmongst serious amateurs and pro’s, usage of Photoshop for photography purposes runs the full spectrum - some are completely satisfied with just using Lightroom (more and more with each new Lightroom release!), some take some percentage to Photoshop to do more complicated work, and others take all their photos to Photoshop to do more complicated work or to use actions they have built or purchased. Many people who have used Lightroom for years still haven’t explored or mastered all of its tools. The first thing I recommend is that you get very comfortable with all of Lightroom’s Develop tools. The key questions are, do you need or want to do enough of those things to justify the $699 price tag, and are you willing and able to invest the time and money to learn this complicated program? There is certainly much that you can do in Photoshop that you can’t do in Lightroom. (If not, you may want to read this post, which talks about why I think pro’s as well as amateurs who really care about their photography should.) The question here is, do you need Photoshop too? I am assuming for the sake of this article that you are already using Lightroom. Photoshop CS6 started shipping yesterday, so I anticipate that a lot of photographers not currently using Photoshop are wondering if they should consider it.
#Buy lightroom 5 update
Update : Read my updated article, on reasons to subscribe to Photoshop CC.