Do I really need Photoshop Creative Cloud?

[SteveKelly]

I recently bought Lightroom 5 along with Photoshop Elements. I am just getting into shooting RAW and I want to start turning my love of photography into a career. I thought with these two programs I had some powerful tools, but the sales lady at Photoshop is trying to convince me that I NEED Creative Cloud to succeed. I will be doing mostly portrait photography for a job, but I will always be photograhing everthing and want to make sure I have the right tools.

 

[jaomul]

You can do so much with Lightroom and elements. Why not hold Off and see if you get stuck for something before you hook up. Maybe portrait professional could also be a cheap tool in your chest

 

[vipgraphx]

The have a $10 monthly subscription that includes both. It's cheap why not get it. I have been using photoshop for years and lets put it this , I would never want to be without it! There is so much more you can do with it to help you when you need it.

IMO elements has never been up to par compared to PS.

 

[Big Mike]

I haven't used Elements in a long time, but I remember that older versions were a little awkward to use, maybe because it was trying to be too user friendly. Photoshop CS, on the other hand, is extremely vast and powerful....but I'd only ever use 30% of it's features.

I find that Lightroom does 90% of what 90% of photographers will need to do. If you can use Elements for that last 10%, then that's great. But there are still plenty of people/photographers who will prefer to have PS CS.

 

[ronlane]

You just bought LR5 and PSE and are new to shooting RAW and processing them. I wouldn't suggest getting CC. Why? Because you already have LR5, which is part of CC. Also, anything that you can do in PSE, you can do in CC, so since you've already spent the money, use these two until you have limitations that you NEED CC.

YMMV

 

[TWright33]

If anything, buy LR5 and then download the newest version of Gimp for any "destructive" editing you need to do.

That way you can decide if you would actually use PS without spending the money and wishing you hadn't.

I bought LR5 and couldn't be happier. I underestimated what the program could do.

Just so happened, my mother had a copy of PSE from her advertising company that was given to me. If it wasn't for that, I would still be only rocking LR5. In all honesty I will probably never need PSE but I have it now and it was free.

 

[KmH]

The issue is bit-depth.

Both Elements and GIMP are limited to doing 8-bit depth edits, which is a severe limitation for editing portraiture.

Photoshop CC has many tools/features that can that can do 16-bit depth edits.

Photo Editing Tutorials

Lightroom's Develop module is Adobe Camera Raw - ACR. ACR was originally developed for Photoshop several years before LR was released.
Elements is consumer grade software and has a consumer grade version of ACR - Camera Raw.
Photoshop CC has essentially the same ACR (Camera Raw) LR uses (Develop module).

Lightroom's primary purpose is image database management, and serves very well as a compliment to Photoshop.

 

[TWright33]

The issue is bit-depth.

Both Elements and GIMP are limited to doing 8-bit depth edits, which is a severe limitation for editing portraiture.

Photoshop CC has many tools that can features that can do 16-bit depth edits.

This answers some questions I've had lately. This is good info.