Staying With Photoshop

Author  AndrewS  June 2013

Masai Structure. I made this color transparency in Tanzania, 1991. The resulting printable photo has been improving over the years as each iteration of Photoshop provides more sophisticated management of scanner output.

My first digital camera  was a Canon Powershot S70, in 2004. To edit the images I bought Photoshop Elements 3 and began climbing up the long steep learning curve of image editing software.  Later I upgraded my camera to one which produced RAW files. At the same time my image editing ambitions grew so I entered the 16 bit world of "Big Photoshop", starting with PS CS4.  The learning curve grew steeper. I spent several years gaining basic competence, upgrading to each new version of Photoshop along the way.

Cost  Over the 4.5 years from November 2008 to June 2013, I spent AUD844.81 on Ps  CS4/5/6. That is AUD15.60 per month. I believe that Photoshop prices in Australia were  significantly higher than in other countries, particularly USA.

The new deal  Adobe recently announced that most of  it's products would move from a purchase model to a monthly subscription model.  The introductory price for one year is AUD9.99 per month. That gets you the full Photoshop Extended which previously cost much more than standard Photoshop. I have to confess this is entirely academic for me as the features of Ps Extended are way beyond  my capability level.

The Rage Response  The subscription model appeared very sensible to me so I signed up within minutes of it becoming available. I was completely astonished by the very different response from other bloggers, website proprietors and users on photo forums. The anti Adobe rage fest went into full swing. Photoshop users cursed Adobe, using vituperative and colourful language. Many proclaimed Adobe would never see their money again.

What was the fuss about ?  Some of the rage response came from people who appeared not to have read even the press releases properly, let alone any of the many product details available. Some appeared to think they "owned" their current version of Ps and would no longer do so in the subscription model.  Of course all they ever bought was a license to use the Adobe software. It was never owned in the sense that anyone could legally resell the product. Some appeared to think that the whole Photoshop enterprise would move up to some nebulous cloudy place, taking all the files with it. Adobe can take some of the blame for that one, the name "CC" did seem to suggest that everything was headed for the clouds.

Apart from that there were various issues, but perhaps the main one was simply change and maybe people are tired of relentless change. 

Alternatives to Photoshop  I have over the years investigated many of these and have discovered that none of them even claims a full set of capabilities equal to Photoshop.

Photoshop  does everything I want within one operating environment, at a level of capability which usually exceeds competing software products. I have found that if another software provider improves on Photoshop in some particular way, Adobe generally buys that provider to incorporate their discovery into Photoshop or reverse engineers it. Either way the good stuff ends up in Photoshop sooner or later, and usually sooner. 

Masai Boys Tanzania, 1991. Color transparency, Epson V700 scan, photoshop.

 

What about Lightroom ?   I bought and paid for Lightroom 4, tried it and removed it from my computer. Why? Two main reasons:

1. I don't like the Lightroom file management process one little bit. I strongly prefer Adobe Bridge (which comes with Ps) which utilises the Folder/file system I already have in place on my hard drive. I have spent years evolving this and it allows me to dowload and find photos quickly and efficiently.

2. Lightroom still needs Photoshop for all the (many) editing tasks which Photoshop can do and Lightroom cannot. Conversely Photoshop does all the things which I would want from Lightroom.

What about Elements ?  This is basically an 8 bit program in most of it's operating space, or at least it was the last time I looked. I feel sure Adobe would announce an upgrade to 16 bit with a very loud fanfare were that to occur.  Its' less expensive than Photoshop because it's less capable.

Today I downloaded Ps CC.Yesterday brought ACR 8.1. On a quick look, it appears there are many improvements in Ps CC which have not even been advertised. For instance I was using the Spot Healing Brush on a scan (I use that a LOT on scans) today and discovered newly added refinements to the capability of the tool. You get to choose from Proximity Match, Create Texture or Content Aware.

I have also been experimenting with the improved version of Smart Sharpen which has new features which will take some time to learn.

Like everything else in Photoshop it's very dense and complex, but extremely capable and worth the steep learning curve.

I like the new Adobe subscription deal and am pleased, so far, with Photoshop CC.