amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

If this is your first venture into post-processing.... I'd highly recommend Adobe Elements 15 instead. It's much simpler and has a lot more support for new users. You can actually choose between three different interfaces: "beginner" which gives you a lot of guidance, "intermediate" which lets you do more on your own, and "expert" once you know your way around and are confident using it.

For many people, Elements 15 is all they really need. It currently costs about half the price of Lightroom 6 or a one year subscription to Photoshop CC/Lightroom CC.

Photoshop is the "Mac Daddy" of all image editing software... extremely complex and highly capable... but with a very steep and long learning curve. To learn to use PS well, plan to spend the next 6 months to a year reading books and taking classes.

And, Photoshop also is only half the equation... Lightroom provides the organizing and cataloging tools that Photoshop lacks. That's why the subscription includes both.

Neither PS nor LR has much built-in support. There are a lot of online tutorials for specific tricks and techniques, regular classes at local colleges and online seminars, as well as plenty of well written, nice thick books available for both.... but especially for PS.

Elements, on the other hand, has "light" aspects of both PS and LR. In a sense, Elements is more of a single, stand-alone software.

A pro who is doing commercial photo work is likely to need LR and PS for some of their capabilities. But if photography is a hobby, you'd very likely be able to do all you ever need to do with Elements.

sirlensalot Loc: Arizona

I went with Lightroom stand alone. I like it better than Elements, but like PS, it can used with LR.

fotoman150

In my opinion, why start with a less powerful program and have to start all over again later. Photoshop is the gold standard. Yes it can be intimidating, but it's well worth the effort to learn. Get get two books. Adobe Photoshop classroom in a book. And Scott Kelby's adobe Photoshop CC for photographers. You'll be up and going in no time. You can learn the basics with just a few hours a day and be up and running in the week.

Don't do Photoshop elements because everything is in a different place and then when you go to Photoshop CC you'll be frustrated. Just bite the bullet and get the $9.99 Adobe cloud subscription and go for it and don't look back. As they said in my favorite movie Avatar, "Sometimes life Doylestown to one in sane move".

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I started building my personal system with Nikon (after learning on a borrowed Canon for a year). I could have gone with Pentax or Canon or Minolta and it would have been fine. I would have switched later, anyway. Professionally, I've used Yashica, Bronica, Minolta, Mamiya, Calumet, Camerz (long roll 35, 46, split 70, and full 70mm film), Canon (film and digital), Nikon (film and digital), Panasonic (digital), Olympus (film), Beattie Systems (long roll film), and each of them had a specific role to play. There is no one best system for everything.

As for software, I use 10 different photo programs, each for its strengths*. I use the Adobe LR/PS/Bridge bundle, Graphic Converter 10, SilkyPix, Fotor, Photos, Image Capture, Epson Scan, and Canon DPP for old Canon images. Oh, and add the NIK plug-ins. For audio and video, I use QuickTime, GarageBand, iMovie, Final Cut, LiveType, iDVD, HandBrake, VLC, and Audacity.

So... I don't see anything wrong with switching tools as the situation requires. If all you know is a hammer, everything looks like a nail!

*My central clearinghouse for cull editing, adjusting, cropping, printing, and exporting photos is Lightroom. Photoshop is my pixel and layers editor. Bridge is for quickly viewing a folder of images. Graphic Converter is there for its slide show feature that makes a great image file sorter, as well. It also has a great batch mode for file format conversions. SilkyPix is for difficult edits of Panasonic raw images, and for its wonderful film looks. Fotor is a toy, for quick edits of snapshots. Photos is for ease of use in getting still images into iMovie. Image Capture is for importing images from SD cards and iPhones. Epson Scan is for scanning prints. Canon DPP is for difficult edits of Canon Raw images. NIK plug ins are for sharpening, B&W conversions, and special effects.

Meives Loc: FORT LAUDERDALE

I would start with Photoshop Elements for $69. Everything you need to post process and you own it. I had the full version for years and it is not needed.

SS319

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems...it has limited abilities to edit or render text, vector graphics (especially through clipping path), 3D graphics and video.

PaintShop Pro (PSP) is a raster and vector graphics editor for Microsoft Windows.

Photoshop is companion to Light Room, Paint Shop Pro is companion to AfterShot Pro.
Photoshop is acknowledged to outperform Paintshop - Aftershot Pro is acknowledged to outperform LightRoom

Photoshop has lots of plugin to simplify your work - Almost all of them work in Paint Shop Pro

Photoshop is in version 16 (CC) since 1988 - Paint Shop Pro is in version 19 since 1990

Photoshop is $120/year - never will you see it "On Special" - Paintshop Pro is $79 for 18-24 months - Currently on sale for $47 (near end of software cycle)

I like PSP because I have had it since version 0.1 (pre-release), and hence my learning curve has matched their growth curve
Most Photoshop people like it because that is what they learned on and there is no learning curve visible from the plateau

I drive a Jeep, am sitting at a Windows Computer and have a windows phone - most Photoshop people drive a Volvo, type on a Mac and have an I Phone.

Now, you have asked this question several times in different formats for two years; In that amount of time, you could have downloaded every imaginable Photography Post Processing software trial and discovered, for yourself, which software fits your style and pocketbook, and you could be informing this group as an unbiased observer which of these many packages offer the most for you and why and why you purchased (or will purchase) the software of your choice.

Time to step up, young man and do your homework.

topcat Loc: Alameda, CA

Photoshop Elements, on sale now at B&H for $60 is a good buy if you don't want to spend $10 every month.
Personally, I use the standalone Lightroom and Elements. I don't miss the aspects of the real Photoshop that I will never use.
Elements and Lightroom are more based on a photographer's view of the work, while the real Photoshop is more towards the graphic designer.

Lundberg02

I have had Photoshop for 21 years, version 3 up to the new 5, it gradually became overkill as it progressed fro image correction to graphics industry standard, adding features that the ordinary user wouldn't ever use or even understand. For photo post processing that 90% of you will ever need , there are now at least a half dozen very capable apps and a dozen more some free that will serve. I use Iridient Raw Developer on a Mac, because it takes my Fuji RAW RAF files and does lens and perspective, white balance, and exposure without any effort on my part. Generally I don't need to tweak anything but focus/sharpness, for which I might also use a third party app like Focus Magic. I have just about all the other RAW processors, but Iridient meets my needs, has a friendly and active developer who does updates two or three times a year, and the app cost me about fifty bucks several years ago.

Coop1947

Great choice. I was in the printing industry as Photoshop became popular. I was the public version of the proprietary Sytex that was used by printers. It's the most complete professional program to do retouching, photo manipulation, and adjusting photos for print or web.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

I remember Scitex when it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the system, in the early 90s.

wesm Loc: Los Altos CA

Hey, I drive a Jeep, and use PS and LR. And I've worked on every conceivable desktop system under the Sun (pun intended).
Now, to add something useful to the conversation, besides all the books, lynda.com has a series of well-done classes for Adobe software.
I like PS because once I finally figured out selections and masking, I was able to do cool things with blending images, targeted local adjustments. I love the blending modes, the control over opacity, that PS provides. Probably On1 and Affinity can do those as well, but I have enough trouble remembering one system.

mdpathjp

Once enough people subscribe to PS/LR, Adobe will start raising their fees; this is a given!

MW

The ACR raw converter in Photoshop is very similar to the developer module in Lightroom. Thus one thing to watch is if you find you rarely need to use anything more than ACR then LR might work better for you. I check out most of the LR alternatives when they have a new trial version available but end up staying with LR. Given what I mentioned about ACR & LR-dev this would apply to PS as well. In my opinion a fundamental question you need answer for yourself is "do I need/want to utilize layers". Either yes or no will narrow down your rational alternatives.

Regarding cost. I really did NOT like the subscription payment model when Adobe first adopted it. Since then I changed my mind. In the long run the cost is about the same. However, it appears to me that Adobe is more active in introducing small improvements at a more or less continuous pace. I suspect this often keeps them ahead of the competition.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Since the marginal cost of an additional subscriber is essentially nil (a little electricity for the occasional download), they could raise the price by a dollar a month, and make $1.00 times their number of subscribers in additional monthly revenue. That isn't going to scare anyone off. Yet it's a 10% increase...

wesm Loc: Los Altos CA

Adobe already reported record profits for this quarter. There's a press release on PRNewsWire.