Contemplating switching from GIMP to Photoshop - questions.

I've been using GIMP for a couple of years now, I can pretty much do what I want with it but IMO some things seem to be cumbersome and some functions (cage transform for instance) are very slow (and my computer is no slouch). I see that Photoshop has a "special" for a couple more days, Photoshop CC and Lightroom for $9.99 per month for a year. It's tempting, but I have some questions that I bet the experts here can answer.

Am I correct in assuming that I'll be paying Photoshop forever for the privilege of using their software, and that after that first year if they decide to they can raise that $9.99 per month to whatever they want?

Is Photoshop CC and Lightroom what I should be getting? I'm nowhere near a pro photographer, I'm just in it for enjoyment and sharing photos with family and friends. I might have 20 or 30 photos a month which are worthy of the effort to process all the way through to finished 'products'. The most complex stuff I do is probably the occasional 'glamor' shot of my 16 year old daughter which she'll show off to her friends.

Thanks in advance for your input.

groundloop wrote in post #16564018
Am I correct in assuming that I'll be paying Photoshop forever for the privilege of using their software, and that after that first year if they decide to they can raise that $9.99 per month to whatever they want?

Yep, when you quit paying you lose access to the software. Yep, they can/may raise the price in the future.

For your stated use and situation I'd recommend PS Elements instead of CC/LR.

Yup, that's the "Catch 22". And if you stop paying, the software stops working. If your image files are in RGB formats (jpg or tiff) that will not be a tragedy because they will remain and can be viewed and edited in a multitude of other applications. If you shoot Raw your situation will be much more problematic. In LR all your asset management measures (tags, labels, keywords, collections) and all your image editing will be stored in a database file that only LR can read, so unless you convert all the Raws to RGB you are tied to LR. Doing the Raw editing in PS's ACR plugin will mean the edits are stored in .xmp files which, although there are a few other programs that can read them, are used primarily by Adobe products. (LR also has the option to make xmps).

You can buy LR5 for $109 on Amazon and PS Elements 12 for $63. So for $172 (compared to the $120 over a year) you will have a processing package that will more than fulfill your needs and it will be yours forever.

tzalman wrote in post #16564110
You can buy LR5 for $109 on Amazon and PS Elements 12 for $63. So for $172 (compared to the $120 over a year) you will have a processing package that will more than fulfill your needs and it will be yours forever.

That's definitely worth looking at. Will those be upgradeable? (I had the impression that every upgrade from now on from Adobe was going to be subscription based).

Also, as someone who doesn't know much about Adobe's software offerings, what does LR do and what does PS Elements do? Will I need both? I shoot almost exclusively in RAW, by the way, and currently do my raw conversions in DPP.

If you can tolerate a rather old version of Photoshop they are giving away CS2! I upgraded from Photoshop 7 to CS2 when someone here told me about it.

It is free and there's no question of continually paying year on year. Of course the downside is that you don't get any automatic upgrades either.

If you save your work as TIFF without adjustment layers you can always go back to GIMP.