As a pro what are the software packages you must have?

Hi. Reading around this site I've read many references to lots of different software packages. These do all manner of cool stuff from editing and workflow to colour management and printing.

What do you think are the bare essentials?


........... and on a 1 to 10 how would you rate the stuff you have?
I'll give Photoshop an (8.5) score

I'll start.
I use Photoshop (8.5) I also use DPP (9) for general sorting, light editing and deleting. I also have a wonderful little freebe called Resizer (9.5)

Thanks,
Snaps

What's your criteria?

GIMP has a pretty good cost/performance ratio.

There is no one right answer. I wedding photographer who is constantly shooting in a broad variety of environments over which he has little control will need different tools than a studio based portrait or commercial photographer.

Personally, I have no desire to own nor do I see good value in a full version of Photoshop. I didn't think much of LR2, but am loving LR3 and consider it essential. I also have an old PSE v4 that came free with a scanner; I use this only for some cloning. My effects (B&W, soft focus, etc.) come out of Tiffen's DFX. For the way I shoot and process, I can't imagine working without any of these.

For me, there are basically just 4 needed. Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, proprietary database for archive and Open office... to write invoices Without everything else, I could survive, at least somehow. Without previously mentioned ones, I couldn't survive not even a day.

Lightroom I use on EVERY image for organizing and keywording. Also use it for cropping, straightening, contrast, white balance, etc. and saturation where needed on select images.

Photoshop is used for a minority of images and only for ultra fine tuning or layer work.

CS5, Camera Raw, and Windows 7....
oohh, and something to convert stuff into .pdf documents every now and then...

Adobe pretty much has me in their pocket with Lightroom and Photoshop.

Outside of the ones mentioned I like portrait professional

I am really finding Microsoft Paint is getting better and better. Pretty soon, I'm sure it's all that I will use.

LR3 is great does most things, but I can't get along without CS5. Don't do studio work though. also like onOne Software suite.

For me?
Lr3, cs5, open office, quickbooks, prowshow gold and I am sure for you it may be different.

LR2+GIMP+Pro Show Gold is all I need.

CS5 master, LR3, MS office 2008, and bluebeam once in a while to manipulate pdf docs.
i also do some small graphic design & web work which is why i use the master edition.

CS5 Master is what I own. I use Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Lightroom mostly. I also use the hell out of excel for invoices.

thecackster wrote in post #11288024
CS5 Master is what I own. I use Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Lightroom mostly. I also use the hell out of excel for invoices.

I'm supprised that so few use DPP even if for no other reason than to convert from RAW to tiff.

I've never used Light Room. Perhaps I should take a closer look.

snaps