I went to Morocco on a guided photo tour (with Strabo) and loved it. Photo tours tend to have very small group sizes so it's a very friendly atmosphere and there was plenty of time for as little (or as much) help as you wanted. Since everybody on the tour was there for photography, there weren't any worries about holding everybody else up because you're busy taking pictures, and there's a lot of built-in camaraderie due to shared interests. I personally loathe the idea of being the one solo traveler on a 50-person coach, but this tour was completely different and wonderful. It's a great way to see a part of the world that you wouldn't ordinarily go to and I loved both the places that I saw and the people I got to see them with. And it was a *lot* less than 12K to 20K. I'm not sure what a full blown "workshop" offers that a small group photo tour does not: due to the small size of the group there was plenty of time for individual attention from the professional but you were also free to wander about on your own if you wanted to.

Catherine

Rebuilding MacOS on a UNIX core was a brilliant idea, and pretty revolutionary thinking to take *the* industrial strength operating system and wrap a great GUI around it rather than just tweaking what was already there. Macs look great, have the best OS out there, a gorgeous GUI and they *just work*. So, I can use it for both my software engineering plus my photography, all in one.

Yes, competition keeps everybody on their toes. Otherwise things get stale and everybody loses in the end. Apple has made a couple of big paradigm shifts (OS X, Intel chips) that people who were heavily invested in the old system were unhappy about, but the end result is miles better and worth the disruption.

And, to the original poster, just get used to Lightroom. Migrating is not all that difficult, and LR is being continually updated and improved. Aperture was pretty old and to my mind really wasn't a worthy competitor anymore. I'm very glad to have made the switch myself, which I wouldn't have done without the kick in the pants of Aperture support being dropped.

If you do the following LR will never "lose" images: (a) back up the catalogue at regular intervals, (b) back up your photos separately, (c) do *all* your moving/renaming of your folder structure within LR (very easy to do).

And, LR will work with literally *any* folder structure you can dream up. The square root of the year multiplied by the Julian date, then add the Planck constant, etc ... Just use the "add" option when importing and LR will not change a hair on your folder's metaphorical head.

LR is meant to be used as the overall manager, and any other use of it is really creating a lot of useless work for yourself. Launch LR, import anything you want to, do your editing, reorganize your folder structure, add keywords, etc. Yes there is a specific way of working from within LR but it's very simple once you get used to it.

LR does not "contain" your images, it merely holds links to them. If you stop using LR, then all your images are still right there in the original folder structure that you set up. You would lose the edits that you made within LR, but if you export before stopping your use of LR then you still have access to all the edits as well. There's no "trap".

Catherine

If you're just getting your feet wet, I would recommend Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, both of which can be purchased as stand-alone products, rather than on the subscription basis. Lightroom is the gold-standard for organizing, and it's pretty easy to play around with the sliders and see what they do to your images.

PSE has a very nice three-level interface, from beginner to guided to expert so you can start off knowing nothing and then slowly progress up to doing full Photoshop level stuff such as layers and brushes. It's not as full-featured as full-blown Photoshop, but it's still very capable in its own right and it's a great stepping stone up to the big granddaddy of them all - Photoshop.

I would *not* recommend going straight to Photoshop because you will need a lot of training (classes, books, videos) to make your way around it. The interface is pretty intimidating and unless you know what you're doing it's very easy to get overwhelmed. Elements, however, is a great way to get your feet wet and start learning.

Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom all interact with each other seamlessly. And, since they're the "big-guns" in the market, there is an incredible wealth of training material out there.

Catherine

You can purchase LR as a stand-alone product, and Elements works just as well with LR as does the full-blown Photoshop. If you decide to go with the subscription, then the full PS comes included, but it's not necessary. I have stand-alone LR and Elements and they play together perfectly. And you can do a hell of a lot with Elements, it's an amazingly capable product in its own right.

I use Mac's and very easily run all of Microsoft Office, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements and a host of other software that's not written by Apple. No problems at all! The person who posted about it needing to be "apple approved" software doesn't know what they're talking about.

And the tech support is unbeatable! I've been to the Apple Store several times, once with a thoroughly nasty problem that they spent hours debugging. No passing the buck, no charge, no nothing. They spent the entire evening on my computer and I walked away with a perfectly functioning laptop, and there wasn't a single dollar exchanged in payment. My mother has her Windows tech support guy on call half the time for some problem or other. I just show up at the Genius Bar and they take care of everything for free.

As other people have already said, LR does NOT impose a file/folder structure on you. If you like your file structure already, just use "add" when importing into LR and bingo, there you are. You're in LR and absolutely NOTHING has changed with regards to your filing system. I personally use LR to create my folder structure when importing direct from my card, but nothing forces you to go that route.

LR is the most flexible cataloguing system out there because it does give you complete freedom as to how you lay out your folders. And, you can delete, add, rename and move around folders to your heart's content after the fact, just as long as you make those changes from within LR. And LR interfaces seamlessly with every 3rd party software that I've seen. It's the 800-pound gorilla on the block, so all the software companies make damn sure that their products play well with LR.

And, if you stop using LR you haven't lost anything: all your photos are in the folder structure right where you left them. There's no need to run a special exporter tool to get them "out" of LR.

Yes, it's a bit of a different paradigm to get used to, but it's time-tested and it works wonderfully. There's a very good reason why it's the dominant software in this field.

I recommend Photoshop Elements for a variety of reasons: (a) lots of documentation and tutorials out there (b) very reasonably priced for the power it gives you, (c) interfaces perfectly with Lightroom, (d) a variety of interfaces from "I don't know anything about what I'm doing" to "I know exactly what the hell i'm doing so get out of my way" and (e) it's an easy step up to the full Photoshop if you decide to go that route.

PSE is not a subscription-based software so provided you don't get the latest/greatest camera every year, you can buy it once and then keep it running for many years. The interface has three different levels: beginner, guided and expert so you can start by blindly moving around a slider to playing with layers, brushes and what not. If you get really into post-processing, the transition to the full-blown Photoshop will be much easier. And indeed, a class in Photoshop is a great way to learn Elements. I personally swear by Lightroom's organizational capabilities, so I don't use the organizer in Elements, but there is that added bonus. And Elements interfaces seamlessly with Lightroom.

Good luck! It can seem like a black hole of time and effort but you only have to do as much as you're comfortable with. And for those computer geeks among us, it can be a lot of fun..

Catherine

I upgraded from PSE 10 to PSE 14 last year, and I love the new interface. It makes it a lot easier to work with the software, especially for those people who are not especially adept with PS. The dehaze filter in PSE 14 has made great photos out of barely passable ones with very little effort.

I'll probably stick with PSE 14 for a while, but I am hankering after version 7 of Lightroom which I'm hoping is released soon!

Catherine

If all the photos plus the LR application and the LR catalogue are all on an internal hard drive, then your internet speed should be immaterial. The WiFi speed came up because some people thought that the drive that all the above are stored on is connected wirelessly to your computer. My understanding is that the CC version of LR only needs to "dial in" to the Adobe servers once a month or so. So, it would seem that the problem is internal to your computer, rather than being a function of your internet speed.

I'm guessing that since you have plenty of free disk space, that maybe you don't have enough memory. How much RAM do you have and when you run LR how many other programs are you running? A lack of memory will slow everything down to a crawl. And if you're on a Mac, check the activity monitor to see if something is running in the background that's chewing up a lot of resources. If you completely shutdown and reboot, is LR still slow?

I'd go for a used MacBook Pro circa 2013. Plenty fast if it's loaded up with memory, and then get a cheap third-party large monitor so you have a Desktop when at home, but a machine that you can easily pack up and take on the road with you - or to the AppleStore if you ever need support. Granted PC's are a bit faster, but I have a 2013 MacBook Pro and it can handle LR, PSE plus a few other programs open at the same time without even thinking about it. Just be sure to get the maximum amount of memory possible to avoid swapping and thrashing. The older MacBook Pros are nice because they can be easily modified after the fact in terms of adding more memory or swapping out the hard drive: I was not a fan of Apple's decision to remove that ability from the purchaser.

And if you're used to MacOS stick with it as switching to a PC is a real pain. The DOS shell is useless, whereas you can do anything with UNIX.

I use Franzis HDR as a Lightroom (version 5.7) plug-in and it works perfectly. No issues and it automatically saves the edited image and imports it back into the LR catalogue just as it should. I used to be a Photomatix fan, but now prefer the Franzis software by far. It's a lot more powerful so it takes a bit of reading and experimentation,, but I think it's worth the learning curve. StackSocial is still advertising the Franzis HDR at a screaming deal for those curious people out there.

Lightroom is a fabulous organizer, a very decent editor, and also serves as the "starting/ending" point for whatever else you're doing. Import your photos into Lightroom and organize/keyword them there, either do your editing in Lightroom itself or call Photoshop/Photoshop Elements/any other 3rd party software.

When calling an external editor (no matter who makes it), the process is the same: select the external editor from within Lightroom, which will automatically start running and load your photo, do your changes and then save it. The edited image will automatically make its way back into Lightroom for you. Very very easy, and one of the beauties of Lightroom is that pretty much every external editor will work with it in this manner.

I personally prefer Elements to the full-blown Photoshop because I like the 3 different modes, and I find the interface a lot easier to work with. I know that this is my fault because I haven't put the proper amount of time into learning Photoshop, but I've never really felt the need to at this point. I get along fine with stand-alone Lightroom and Elements. I have an older camera so I've never had to upgrade my software: Lightroom 5.7 and Elements 14 get everything done that I need to. But if you want the upgrades, the subscription is a screaming deal. Each to his/her own ... I am, however, hoping for stand-alone Lightroom 7 so that could talk to Outlook 2016. I'll just wait and see.

Lightroom is a complex piece of software but if you read "Quick Start Guide to Lightroom" by the Lightroom Queen (available free on the web) and take care to observe the few "Gotcha's", you'll be up and minimally functional very quickly. It is the best piece of photo organizing software out there, as far as I know. Pretty much every third-party editor has a LR plug-in, an additional bonus. I would advise you to stick with LR, and there are lots of people on this forum who can help you through any difficulties.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Catherine

I'm not sure how well NIK works with the latest versions of MacOS since NIK isn't being upgraded any longer. I'm running 10.10 (Yosemite) and it works just fine for me, but I don't know about MacOS 10.12.