Lightroom bought out right is a low cost program which will manage files, do raw conversions and to some extent retouching.

Photoshop CS6 is a high cost program which will manage files (Bridge) do raw conversions and very sophisticated retouhing and image manipulation.

CS6 + Lightroom costs (in UK) about £700 to purchase outright, annual updates (I am guessing) about £250.

The annual cost (at present prices and in future if rumours prove true) of PS + LR is £105.00 and this will include all updates/upgrades.

CS6+LR for 5 years and with all updates/upgrades (if CS6 remains supported) will cost £1700, the cloud method £505.

Lightroom on its own can be purchased here for approx. £80 and annual updates are about £60.

If you want Adobe software, the rental method will save a lot of money.

What I have not mentioned is that technical support is free, I have heard that after a certain period of time on "paid up" applications, Adobe either charges for support or declines support altogether.

I can survive (photographically speaking) without Photoshop, but I would really miss not having LR which has become the core of everything I do with images once they leave the camera.

Too many people are staying away from Adobe products through a misunderstanding of how the system works.

Your images are not stored in the cloud, they are on your computer, whether on your main hard drive or external drive is entirely up to you. You can, if you want, take advantage of Adobe's cloud storage, Behance, which if you take up their current offer will give you 2Gb of free storage. This is not compulsory.

You do not have to be online to use the Adobe products. the Photography offer, currently $10 per calendar month, is a license to use Lightroom, Photoshop, Bridge and one or two other peripheral programs, at any time you wish, on or offline.

Payment method is by automatically debiting your credit card once a month on a particular day. That day is the same each month. If for any reason Adobe are unable to collect the money, you are sent a message and have one month to rectify the situation.

At indeterminate times during the month, the Adobe servers will connect with your computer and post information about updates (so far I have received at least one a month for the programs I have). I believe this connection serves two purposes, 1. to keep your programs up to date and 2. to ensure the programs are in use and probably they gather non-personal statistics on module usage. (The latest version of the terms and conditions states that if the programs are not being used the contract can be broken by Adobe. I do not believe they would do this as long as they are getting their money.)

I was one of those reluctant to subscribe, my reasoning was that the price would go beyond affordability after the first year. The new terms and conditions no longer mention price increases at contract renewal time - it is still a wait and see thing, but I am now more optimistic about renewal.

If you use the Photoshop CC and decide not to renew your contract, your images (on your computer) are still safe and intact. Photoshop files can be opened by Elements; jpg, tiff and png files by almost any other vendors program.

Remember that Elements is not part of the Cloud services and probably never will be. (There is not enough money in Elements to make it worth while to Adobe.)

I have written this not to push Adobe products, but to allay fears and misunderstandings on how the Adobe Cloud works.

Photoshop CC will cost you more than the annual update costs registered users paid when new versions of Photoshop came out under the previous box versions. The only difference is the initial access cost if you are a new user. You will pay $240 every two years which is more than the 2-year new version cycle cost of $169 which is what registered users paid for new versions. It was even cheaper for those who jumped versions when the new one did not have sufficient improvements to warrant the upgrade. In addition, the monthly pay-forever fee is subject to increase at Adobe's whim, and of course you have no choice to block an update or continue using a previous version. It's a slippery slope right into Adobe's corporate retirement fund while relieving Adobe programmers of having to provide sufficient new features to entice users to upgrade.

However, for those who support the madness, the best single book I've found on understanding basic Photoshop features is "Adobe Photoshop for Photographers" by Martin Evening. The online help index is, of course, available, but I always like a hard copy that I can hold on my lap as I work through an example.

The only advantage I can see for Photoshop over PSP or other high-end layer-based pixel editors is the amount of online YouTube videos and printed media. That is changing, however, and most Photoshop-related how-to instruction is easily adaptable to other editors if you understand the concept. I'm still an enthusiastic CS6 user, but I'll never move to subscription software.