Two General Software Question

[BlindGuyTakingPictures]

As I am migrating to a SLR camera, I was wondering what is the "preferred" software that you find which is the most easiest to use and can take the pictures to the next level?

Is "Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2" one of those? I have been using this for a while to do "Quick Edits" of the pictures from the P&S camera.

[Ook]

A number of people use Paint Shop Pro; I haven't used it so I can't comment.

Adobe Photoshop is the "industry standard" image editing software. It's expensive, so a bunch of people use Photoshop Elements, or Lightroom (which is a bit different from what I gather). It's simple enough to start with, and can get as complex and powerful as you like. It's incredible.

[HuskyKMA]

Right now I'm using Fireworks.

Photoshop is the major tool of choice, but it's expensive. About $700 for standard and $1000 for the extended version.

I'm just about to pick it up. Through my school I can get a student discount and get the Adobe Master Collection CS4 for $500, which includes Photoshop Extended and a buttload of other software I want/need. By comparison, Amazon.com sells the Master Collection for $2450. I love student discounts.

[GinoE]

I use Lightroom and Photoshop, but you can do a lot with Lightroom alone - it's not that expensive, and getting more powerful with every new version :-) It has raw conversion, cataloguing, non-destructive editing, printing, all in one package. Highly recommended!

[dmmiller]

I'm using a free trial offer of lightroom now, to see if I like it. And so far, its blows away DPP with PP. (IMO) I see a big difference in shadows and blown-out white recover with Lightroom than I did with DPP.
I did load a trial version of a photoshop, and loved it. Cuz you can do more tricks with it. from what I've seen, lightroom is just for tweaking your shots, and not adding/taking away extras.

[DStanic]

Lightroom is my tool of choice. I also have Photoshop Elements for doing more powerful editing. I would recommend those 2 since eventually you will likely want to try them anyways.

[Ook]

I love student discounts.

Yeah, I got mine on discount as well! I really think the software's unreasonably expensive otherwise.

[egordon99]

I use Adobe CS3 Bridge for my sorting/keywording/management and CS3 Photoshop for my RAW processing (actually ACR) and resizing/sharpening/web and print prep.