YOUR Essential & Necessary Software , u couldn't live without

Lightroom
DPP(for sharpening)
NeatImage(noise removal)

Lightroom
Firefox
Adium

For me its:
Lightroom
Photoshop
Firefox

Adobe Camera Raw
CS2
Noiseware/Pro
After Mssr. Simpson's post, downloading Nik Filters (wow)

photoshop cs3
bibble 4.9
gom player
firefox
Noiseware

ps strange nobodoy uses Picture Window Pro 4.0

Photoshop CS2 / ACR
Digikam
Amarok
Firefox
Vmware
MythTV
Noise ninja
Apache, Mysql, PHP

What? i use paint. exclusively.

It doesnt like raw files, though.

Nah. CS2 all the way for me

Photoshop CS
Neat Image http://www.neatimage.c​om
1-Click Actions http://www.1clickactio​ns.com

...and a chess program for when I'm pretending to be doing something useful.

iView Media Pro
DPP
PSCS2

Looking at what others are posting here about "essential" software I guess I have different views on what "essential" and "couldn't live without" means so I'm withdrawing my post.

Currently:

Lightroom
Firefox
PSE3
Excel

Lightroom
CS2 (until Lightroom becomes advanced enough to do a few things it currently does not).

blinktwice wrote in post #3201080
For me its:
Lightroom
Photoshop
Firefox

Yes, Yes and Yes....

ditto for me though a different order -

Lightroom
Firefox
Photoshop
(and I heavily use Editplus, FlashFXP, and putty as well)

For creative work, I'm using:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium (of course, for photographic work, that means Photoshop CS3 Extended - though I don't really use any of the Extended features; it just happens to be Extended in this suite - and Bridge CS3)

Breeze Downloader Pro (Lightroom's downloader is very limited, and Breeze Downloader Pro will geotag my images)

PTLens

Noise Ninja

TLR Professional Mask Toolkit

TLR Professional Sharpening Toolkit

ACR Calibrator L

Mike's Framer

Pekka's Exhibit Engine 2 (and if you want to talk about hosting and serving, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Vandyke SecureCRT / SecureFX, and various utilities on FreeBSD - bash, rsync, some hand crafted shell scripts)

Windows XP Professional (well, you need some sort of OS!)

Beyond Compare

Backup Exec for Windows Servers

Monaco OPTIX XR Pro

As others have said already, these are just my choices. If I had to buy it all over again, I'd go for the same Adobe software, and I regard Breeze Downloader Pro as a wonderful piece of software for little money.

PTLens is in the same bracket as Breeze Downloader Pro - it does a great job for very little (it can now be used as a Smart Filter in Photoshop CS3 as well), and Noise Ninja is very useful when I have to shoot high ISO. The various scripts I mentioned are all inexpensive or free, and again, do a wonderful job.


I'm pretty much forced into a Windows based system by some of the other software I need to run. I'll probably go to Vista at some point, but right now it would mean a lot of breakage and paying out to upgrade other software I use for little if any benefit.

Beyond Compare is a useful tool for all sorts of jobs, including synchronising folders between hard disks.

Backup Exec is a feature laden backup system - but it may be overkill for many.

Monaco OPTIX XR Pro is great - but discontinued. If buying now, I'd get a Eye One Display 2.

David