PSP 6 is an outstanding program that a lot of Hoggers don't have much of an idea of the power it has. If you are proficient with PSP 6, I am not sure how much better lightroom is as I am not that familiar with lightroom. It would have to be significantly better than PSP 6 for me to spend all the time to learn a new program. I did a trial of lightroom 4 when it came out and I was too confused with it to go for very long. Deleted it and went back to my PSP. PSP does not force you into a specific cataloging program like lightroom does with importing, exporting, and cataloging. Extremely confusing to me. But, that may be only for me because I am simple minded to start with and I understand hard drive structure. I want to know exactly where I put my images. The organizer in PSP suits me just fine. And, post processing capabilities are very good. PSP 6 uses the same plugins from Topaz, Redfield, NIK, etc as Photoshop and probably lightroom does. I apologize for the rant, but I get a little disturbed that so many people believe that lightroom is the one and only decent program for photo post processing.

Lightroom and Photoshop serve different purposes and complement each other.

LR is a high volume, batch processing, keywording/organizing/search, and light editing tool. It's useful for making proofs (print or digital), maintaining catalogs and websites, and making slide shows, among other things. The image editing/optimization in LR is mostly limited to global adjustments. I usually spend less than a minute on an image in LR. For more finely finished work, pass off images from LR to PS.

PS is the mac daddy of image processing and optimization softwares. You can work right down to the pixel level if needed and can use multiple layers, masks and other tools for extremely precise work. Way, way beyond what can be done in LR. But PS's weakness is it's rather slow and cannot efficiently handle large volumes of images, and doesn't have much in the way of cataloging/keywording/search tools built in. For those functions, you need LR.

Hence, the two complement each other nicely.

Some folks who don't do a high volume of images get by fine with PS alone. Other folks who don't make finished prints of high quality and don't have any other high use for their images... maybe only display and share stuff online, make small prints occasionally for scrapbooks, for example... might find LR alone is adequate for their purposes.

Adobe Elements is a bit of each... It has "lite" versions of some of the major features of PS, along with some other features drawn from LR... Some even find Elements adequate for all their purposes.

Lightroom and Photoshop serve different purposes and complement each other.

LR is a high volume, batch processing, keywording/organizing/search, and light editing tool. It's useful for making proofs (print or digital), maintaining catalogs and websites, and making slide shows, among other things. The image editing/optimization in LR is mostly limited to global adjustments. I usually spend less than a minute on an image in LR. For more finely finished work, pass off images from LR to PS.

PS is the mac daddy of image processing and optimization softwares. You can work right down to the pixel level if needed and can use multiple layers, masks and other tools for extremely precise work. Way, way beyond what can be done in LR. But PS's weakness is it's rather slow and cannot efficiently handle large volumes of images, and doesn't have much in the way of cataloging/keywording/search tools built in. For those functions, you need LR.

Hence, the two complement each other nicely.

Some folks who don't do a high volume of images get by fine with PS alone. Other folks who don't make finished prints of high quality and don't have any other high use for their images... maybe only display and share stuff online, make small prints occasionally for scrapbooks, for example... might find LR alone is adequate for their purposes.

Adobe Elements is a bit of each... It has "lite" versions of some of the major features of PS, along with some other features drawn from LR... Some even find Elements adequate for all their purposes.