I remember polio as a child. It kept us out of swimming pools another public places. I remember visiting people in iron lungs and having friends with the braces. Some still have post-polio syndrome.

In 1985 Rotary International initiated an effort to rid the world of polio by distributing vaccines to every child in the world. Originally a $250 million effort, it has ended up costing billions. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed several hundred million dollars. In highly populated places such as India and parts of Africa, Rotary would conduct immunization days where thousands of volunteers would travel to rural parts of the country and immunize millions of children in a single day. As a result today there are only a handful of new cases in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria where religious leaders claimed it was an effort to poison children. At the same time other vaccines were distributed as well.

Rotary partnered with many organizations including the World Health Organization, which often gets the bulk of the credit. The effort continues today. More information is available at https://www.endpolio.org

Love your tongue in cheek.

What is the photo being used for? If it is, for example, a forensic photo to be used in a legal context, accuracy and honesty is important. If you are taking a portrait and use available tools to , say, remove blemishes from the subject, perhaps only the subject should know, . (Hopefully it was at their request.)

As Jerry pointed out, even in the age of film and plates, photos were processed. A photo is processed the moment it enters a camera, based upon exposure settings, focus, film speed, sense, etc. Once film went into the development tank it was processed by solution and time. Printing the negative involved additional processing. The difference now is that we have much greater ability to make significant changes.

I spent two cloudy, dull days at Arches NP. The photos were bland. I was able to make them more interesting in post processing.

The controlling question is whether you are trying to deceive the viewer with your photo in a harmful way. If you are not, then the end product stands on its own merit, because there is creative skill involved from the time you frame the phot until you publish it.

For any number of reasons, foreign based companies will have U.S.offices. A Canadian company I order from has a U.S. address for shipping, presumably to simplify customs. There may be other tax or regulatory reasons, or convenience, for having a U.S. office.

se Bridge to import photos to my drive. I started using it before I got Lightroom. I like it because of the batch processing capability, which I use to rename and sort my photos. Once in Bridge I add some keywords and other information.

It's probably very unsophisticated , but I then import into Lightroom, which I like because of its cataloging and editing capabilities.

I admit I am not an expert user and probably don't understand the Adobe phot suite, but I do like the interaction between the different programs.

Somebody needs to sprinkle some pixel dust into this discussion.

Especially with groups I ask them to put their heads down then look up when I count to three. Seems to work.

I completely understand what you are saying, and I liked film. But digital offers many advantages.

Travel - I took a trip to the Soviet Union in 1990 just before it broke up. I took my film camera, but was limited on the number of roles of film I could take by both finances and space. I would love to have done that trip with my digital compact zoom and a couple of cards.

Processing -Lab costs were very restricting. I really enjoyed processing and printing my own film, but it was also expensive and time consuming. There were limits to the experimenting that I could do given that it took time to expose and and develop prints. I like the freedom digital gives me.

Space - I have notebooks full of prints, slides and negatives. They take up a lot of space and have been moved multiple times. I tried to keep them organized, but it is still hard to go through them and find what I am looking for. Sometimes I can't even remember. My mother never threw away a single photograph, no matter how poor the quality. Then she haphazardly stuck them in albums. When she died she had albums full of photos that were just randomly thrown together. My siblings and I ended up filling a dumpster with all her photos. I like the fact that I can now keep thousands of photos on a device the size of a deck of cards and sort through them in a myriad of ways.

Flexibility - Sometimes I just will shoot stuff just to capture an image, know I may discard it later. If I'm trying to do quality photos I will take my time and be selective, but I can now take a chance on a photo knowing that I am unconstrained by film and cost. I can also experiment and see what I am getting. My phone camera is primarily for snapshots and convenience.

As much as I appreciate film, I am happy with digital.

I finally had to break down and replaced y 10-year old MacBook.

I now have a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro chip) with OS 12 Monterey but plan to upgrade to OS 13 Ventura. I have tried to research whether Lightroom Classes and Creative Cloud are compatible with Venture. What I read leads me to believe they are, although I may have to reinstall Lightroom.

I am tech literate but don't always speak the language well and would appreciate hearing from those even more knowledgeable about their experience using Photoshop and Lightroom on Ventura

I also make my own frames. I use wood from various sources including going to salvage shops or places like Restore to get pieces. The hardwood store I go to has molding pieces intended for construction, but I have been able to glue different molding together to create frames. Sometime it just takes getting dimensional stuff from the lumber store and using a router to create frame material. What makes the frame unique is that I do not use stuff you find in a frame shop.

Certainly the digital world has made it possible to take and keep almost unlimited photos. I think it's great for creating the opportunity to try more shots that then you would in the film days. You can start deleting when you take the shot.

I know I have more than I can realistically go through and need to get down to more serious curating.

Just for anecdotal telling, my mother loved to take pictures. She usually bought rolls of 24. She took pictures of everything, especially social gatherings. When she died, my brother and sister and I went into her storeroom and found four or five 6-shelf bookcases full of photo albums - the kind where you stick the pictures in originally with the corner tabs and then plastic sleeves. We started going through them and realized that after she has a roll of film developed, she would put the pictures in whichever album had room. As a result we found photos from the 1960s mixed in with photos from the 1990s.

Very few were labeled, and we didn't know most of the people and places in the pictures. In the end after a quick glance we decided to junk all but a few of the albums. We filled up the back of my pickup and literally filled a 2-yard dumpster. My kids, who lived out of town, were distraught. I told them they could have come and taken them home if they wanted.

I did keep some of the interesting older albums, and have yet to get through them all. While they are neat old black and white photos, some going back to the 1920's, I can't identify most of the people.

My father on the other hand, had a couple of file folders of interesting historical family photos. I was able to go through those and scan them, making copies available for my siblings and kids. I have no idea what photos he did not keep, but I'm glad he did not.

I am now faced with going through my thousands of slides and negatives , most of which will be trashed, again filling trash containers and landfills.

Thanks to digital my kids will be able to go through my 30,000 digital files much more easy and will not fill physical containers when they are dumped.

Based upon this experience, I make an effort to go through photos as I take them off the camera and save only the best. I'm getting better at keyboarding and organizing into folders. But I have learned and continue to learn that not every photo is worth saving. But that is my choice.

Before you spend money on an attorney, and I'm not advising against that, talk to your homeowners insurance carrier to see whether the liability and property insurance will meet your needs. Do you have an agent who can advise you. When I was in consulting and airshow announcing business we carried a general business insurance policy that cost about $500 and it covered most risks. Your biggest risk will probably be getting to and from the job. You might also look into an umbrella policy through your homeowners that will offer broad general coverage.

Thank you for your clear and comprehensive explanation. I am not by any means a heavy user - hobby photo and other creative plus Office 365. Sounds like either the iMac or mini will do the trick.

Some have suggested the Mini because having the separate monitors gives some flexibility should something fail. Anyone have thoughts on advantages of either iMac or mini? I am sticking with Apple and will keep MacBook for mobility.

Thanks for the catch on GB vs MB. My mind must have been in the 90s. As most have pointed out - 16GB is the max, but you all have confirmed that the M1 changes the calculation.

My 10 year old MacBook Pro is now struggling to keep up with the Adobe Creative Cloud and some other software. I am considering getting a Mac Mini with the M1 chip. I have researched previous discussions about the Mini, but most are about a year old, so I am curious to get more recent thoughts. Previous discussions are positive about the Mini with the Apple chip. Is that still true?

What about memory and storage? From what I read, 8mb seems to handle Photoshop and Lightroom well, but is it worth paying the extra $200 to get 16, since it is hard to upgrade. Then there is always the storage decision. I'm inclined to go for at least 512, but that will be budget driven. The mini appears to be the best value in the Apple line. Any helpful thoughts from UHH members are appreciated.

One last question - better to buy from Apple or some other source such as B&H or even Amazon?