I agree.

A 14 year-old does not have the same interests as an adult. Photoshop and Lightroom do not offer the same fun-type tools that come with PSE, things like the special effects in the Guided Edit mode. Invest the $100 in PSE 12, let her have fun with her photos.

Maybe she will outgrow it in a year or so, maybe not. PSE's UI is reasonably close to Photoshop, so that when/if she is ready, adapting to Photoshop will be easy for her.

Although they will not publically admit it, there are plenty of experienced photo enthusiasts out there that use PSE. I suspect some are even professionals.

If your concern is that the pictures you will be taking will fill up you hard drive on your laptop, here is what I would do.

1. Keep your installation of PSE 12 on your laptop.
2. Store the photos on your 1 TB external drive. Setting the the preferences in PSE 12's Organizer will allow all your new photos to go there automatically. Also, using Version Sets in the Organizer, youe edited pictures will go there as well.
3. True, external drives are slower, but there are two things you can do to speed things up. First, if possible use a USB 3.0 drive. Even if your laptop does not have USB 3.0, your drive will be ready for the new computer you may buy in the future.

Second, Move the Catalog file to your C drive, if it somehow is on the external drive. The preview cache should go along with the Catalog. Moving is done via File > Manage Catalogs in the Organizer. By doing this, PSE 12 will only to access the external drive when it needs to work with the full resolution image, like when you are editing it.

You will keep the external drive attached to your laptop whenever you are using PSE 12.

If you have an exiting Catalog on your Laptop, you cn use the PSE 12 Backup/Restore commands to move the Catalog and pictures to your external drive.

Finally, I would buy a second external drive to back up everything periodically, again using the backup/restore commands of PSE 12.

The above may sound complicated, but it really is not because PSE 12 has all of the commands to do it.

Hope this helps somewhat.

www.donstouder.com

In my opinion, that is a good choice. Ziza provided an excellent list of the "editing" features of PSE 12. I've been teaching this program since PSE 1 (before the Organizer was incorporated from Photoshop Album in PSE 3), and strongly recommend to my students, especially those just starting out to use the Organizer in PSE to mange their image collections.

Lightroom 5 is an excellent database image manager, but it is not nearly as easy to learn as the Organizer in PSE. I strongly suspect that your grandson will not outgrow the capabilities of the Organizer anytime soon.

FWIW

FWIW

No one mentioned (unless I missed it) that PSE also includes an excellent, easy to use Organizer. It is far easier to use than Lightroom, contains many of the same features, and is robust enough to handle large Catalogs. I've used it for many years to manage my 40K+ image/video collection.

No matter what, with the interest he has shown so far, his image collection is going to grow rapidly.

Can you still buy a boxed version of LR5 now that it is included with PS CC?

I

Probably a dumb question, but do you have the Tool Options bar open, so you can see/change the various options? Frmes works fine for me, but the first time I tried it the Photo Bin bar was turned on, so I did not see how to make adjustments to the frame settings. Like I said, I suspect you are way beyond this point. But just in case...

I have used nothing but non-Canon batteries in my XTi and 7D for the past several years. I have had no trouble.

Some do not provide the battery level icon and may require a different charger. Both of these limitations are easy to accommodate. Once in the camera, these batteries seem to last as long as the Canon battery.

Wendy,

I would suggest using Facebook and/or Pinterest to get a following to your blog or website. Also, I have used the free blogging service at www.wordpress.com for a blog/website combined. Yes. it may be limited but it's a good way to get started without the need of a paid site to host your blog or website, such as www.wordpress.org requires.