wapiti Loc: round rock, texas

For the cost of a hamburger and hot dog per month, perhaps much less, you've got the best in image processing. To me, its a no brainer..

dynaquest1 Loc: Austin, Texas

Me too!!!

portcragin Loc: Kirkland, WA

I prefer Photoshop to LightRoom. I use CC. I removed LR from my computer. I think you can get overwhelmed with PP software. My other choice is On1 Photo10 out of Portland, OR.

Good Shooting,

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Yes, that is the deal from Adobe. Most people use LR to organize and do most of their editing, but once in a while you want to do more pixel editing so Photoshop is your choice then. They work seamlessly together.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I personally despise Lightroom for its byzantine and labyrinthine system of file organization. If it works for you fine, but I prefer to stay organized in a non-proprietary file system. If you have it all in LR and someday you get rid of it or lose it for one reason or another God help you. Almost as bad as Apple...

In terms of actual processing, LR is certainly the poor cousin to PS, which includes in ACR all the processing functionality of LR except batch processing. And you gain smart objects, layers, 3D and a thousand other things that LR does not and never will have. If you don't know a layer mask from a hole in the ground, LR is probably fine for you, though.

PSCC contains major improvements from CS6, and while I hate the subscription model, I willingly pay Adobe their tithe, since I keep CS5 for the day that I cut loose, as it will always open my psd files. Adobe has certainly kept their promise to continue to improve PS, and for general work I could never go back to CS5 or CS6.

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

if you convert to DNG you can then you can use ps6, I just checked Nikon and looked for any updates for PS6 camera RAW and D5000 , couldnt find any, then checked a few other sites, no luck. So using DNG or upgrading to CC seems your only choices.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Great choice of words!

Mobad58

When updating choose advanced then uncheck the box for the deletion of older versions. Then go to file mgr and copy n paste your plugins from the old version... Worked just fine for me...

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I converted to the CC version in December, began using LR for all my importing, naming and filing and I would never consider going back. I bought training DVDs from Laura Shoe, on sale today, and they were invaluable to my skill acquisition. I have changed my entire PP workflow and process, for the better, and am now faster and produce better results. With my philosophy of "getting it right in-camera" I use Lightroom 90% of the time and Photoshop 10% as there are several things in Photoshop that Lightroom can not do. Ten bucks a months to have the very latest version is a no-brainer for me. Best of luck!

jrichter

Oknoder,

I tried what you suggested but it did not work. I noticed on the web page that you sent me that it says: "Camera Raw 9.1.1 is the most current version compatible with Bridge CS5 and Photoshop CS6." That might explain why it does not work. Thank you. though, for the suggestion!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I've used Photoshop since version 1.0. I skipped many versions, and used 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, CS3, and now have the CC bundle with Lightroom. Photoshop is a 30-year old "Borg of a black hole time-suck," but when you need it, it is 'da bomb' of image editors.

Just do it (get CC). Being always up to date is worth it, if you use it a lot.

I love Lightroom for its cull-editing features, package printing features, ACR, and much more. Lightroom was developed as a WORKFLOW tool by working professional photographers. It is an *image database,* and its interface takes some study and getting used to. But if you are a prolific photographer managing thousands or tens of thousands of images, it's great. It does probably 90% of what needs to be done with a day's work, and Photoshop can then finish the job.

I now stay out of Photoshop unless I need retouching or layers or type or some other feature LR doesn't have.

jrichter

I have several actions that I currently perform in Photoshop CS6 from time to time. Will they work in Photoshop CC? Will I have to recreate them? Thanks.

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

I have played with the CC version but preferred to stay with CS6 as CC didn't offer enough extras to justify the cost. All of my Plugins, Actions and Brushes were able to be used in CC as they were in CS6.

HTH,
Matthew

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

You have other options, besides "upgrading" from PS CS6 to PS CC...

There are some new features in PS CC that you might consider, whether or not you need them. I'm pretty sure you can do a side-by-side comparison at the Adobe website, for more info about the differences.

Your PS CS6 is perpetually licensed, but no longer "supported" by Adobe. As you've discovered, it's Adobe Camera Raw (version 9.1.1) cannot be used with cameras introduced after Fall 2015, when Adobe stopped updating it. And that will be the last version of ACR they will ever offer for the software.

PS CC is only offered by subscription... so you will have to pay a monthly fee to use it. As it stands right now, the cost is close to the same as the licensed versions (of both LR and CC, since they are both included in the CC bundle), assuming those were upgraded approx. every three years. Of course, it's like a month-to-month lease, without rent control... the "landlord" can change the rent any time they wish (and are unlikely to reduce it... more likely to increase it). And, if you skip a rent payment, the landlord will "evict" you.

Your alternatives are:

1. Buy a copy of Lightroom 6 (around $150 for full version, last time I looked... recently they also offered an LR5 to LR6 upgrade for the first time, that cost around $75 for current LR5 users). LR6 would also be useful for it's cataloging and organizing capabilities, anyway. It is a powerful complement to PS (any version). PS and LR are really two sides of a coin, either one is a bit incomplete without the other.

And LR6 is being kept up-to-date (so far), uses a later version of ACR that will work with your newer camera. You can open (i.e., "convert") the RAW file in LR6 and pass it off to PS CS6 for finishing work in 16 bit mode. According to Adobe, they will continue to support LR6 for now and there will continue to be future perpetually licensed versions of LR.... at least for a while.

Now, LR6 doesn't have a few features that LR CC does. Adobe seems to be dragging their heels about updating it or introducing "LR7". That's probably deliberate, to encourage people to subscribe rather than buy the licensed version. But, the most important part of LR6.... Adobe Camera Raw... is being kept up to date and able to handle newer cameras. So what if you can't do panoramas in LR6.... You can simply convert the files in it and pass them off to PS CS6, where they can be combined to make a panorama (among other things).

2. Buy a copy of Photoshop Elements 14 (about $70, last time I looked). This is more of a stand-alone software actually. It borrows on the main, most-used features of both LR and PS. And it's ACR is being kept up-to-date, to handle newer cameras.

The shortcoming of PSE is that it can only output 8 bit files (JPEGs, primarily). So RAWs converted in PSE and passed off to PS CS6 for more advanced work would only be workable in 8 bit mode.

Files output as 8 bit JPEGs are fine for a lot of purposes... most printing, online display, etc. require them.... but can be for other purposes. Especially if additional work is going to be done on the image, it's often better done in 16 bit mode.

3. Download a free copy of Adobe DNG Converter and use it to convert your camera's files into Adobe's DNG "universal RAW", which can be handled in 16 bit mode in most earlier versions of PS... including CS6, of course.

There are some advantages to this... such as LR's XMP "sidecar" files are not needed with DNG. Instead, that same data is embedded within the DNG.

But apparently there also are some disadvantages (Google it, for more info), so it's recommended you archive both the original RAW files and the DNG, just in case you stop using DNG in the future. Of course, this basically doubles the number of files you'll be storing and will require a lot more hard drive space.

4. Buy or get any other free RAW converter that's able to work with your cameras files. There are a lot of different ones, including Nikon's own (last time I looked, they charged for it.... don't know if that's still true). Some of these might interface better or worse with PS CS6. If able to output 16 bit TIFFs, that would be ideal. I imagine most are unlikely to be able to produce 16 bit PSD, which is a proprietary Adobe file type.

Personally, I'm using PS CS6, like you... But I complement it with LR6 (which has hugely sped up my workflow, compared to when I used PS alone), so I have no immediate concerns about recent or at least near-future camera compatibility.

I've worked with PS since the mid-1990s, when the first version for PCs was introduced (version 4?). Like Burkphoto, I skipped some versions... tended to "upgrade" approx. every other version.

I've used LR since the first version... I think I skipped LR2, but upgraded to LR3, LR4, LR5 and most recently to LR6. It's been a huge time saver and I simply wouldn't want to be without it. But I take a lot of photos (upwards of 20,000 in the past 6 or 7 weeks) and really need my workflow to be as efficient as possible. If I didn't use LR, I'd be using some other digital asset management and cataloging software. But LR is excellent, works well in conjunction with recent versions of PS and would be what I'd recommend you get and learn to use. It will solve your problems, even if you don't need it's high volume capabilities.



Huh?

All LR does is reflect the file structure YOU set up elsewhere in your computer.

LR doesn't make you use any particular organization. You can move things around within LR... or externally, if preferred (after which it's necessary to update LR, but that's easily done with a couple clicks). And, you can rename files or create folders there... but that's no different from what you might do outside LR.

LR is completely "non-destructive"... meaning that everything "changed" in LR is only being shown as a preview and no "changes" are actually applied to the original file. LR's output normally is a new file that leaves the original untouched (unless you deliberately overwrite it, which LR warns against and tries to prevent).

Before LR, I used about a half dozen different programs to sort, rename, keyword, catalog and manage my files, edit them lightly, make and watermark proofs that are upload online and/or output as printed catalogs. Now I can do almost everything (~90%) much faster and more efficiently in LR, and only pass off the the finishing work done on select images to PS (~10%, like Burkphoto). I still use a few other things, but mostly as plug-ins to LR and PS.... and a lot less often, since almost everything I need done can be done within the LR/PS workflow.

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

If adobe would finally come around to expanding the support for 32bit files, I would happily jump ship but they have been dragging their heels on this front for years now adding only bits and pieces of support for higher bit depths.

Matthew