Don't ever buy Photoshop on ebay. Those are all from pirate ships unless the price is enormous (and sometimes even then). If you look at the fine print on the websites for the ebay vendors they are selling you a "backup copy", in other words one without a valid serial number. Also, many cheap repros of PShop come complete with lots of spyware.

There is photoshop elements, but IMHO that is a very clunky mess anymore, although it used to be an outstanding program for hobbyists.

I like Affinity Photo very much and it's not expensive. But if you are used to using Pshop, you will have to relearn how you approach editing. It has very complete online tutorials so you can look at the website to see how it works.

ETA There is also the GIMP and its derivatives, which are mostly free, but sadly lacking in easy to understand documentation.

I was afraid of exactly what you said, wb, that the ebay offerings were pirated or some such.

I have nothing to re-learn. My limited experience with Picknick was long ago and limited.

DSIL has downloaded DarkTable, but hasn't bothered learning it. He shoots in RAW (until now, I thought RAW referred to uncooked). I may have to get an external hard drive to get photos from him since they are HUGE, he tells me.

I'll check out the two you mentioned.

Yes, there's nothing better than LR for working with raw files, but I believe adobe has finally made good on their threat to pull the standalone edition so you can only get it as part of a Creative Cloud subscription now. But check me on that. I'm not as up on all things adobe as I used to be.

The idea of an older version of PSE is also great, but only if bbstx has an older camera if she wants to work with raw files. Adobe cut off updating the raw converter for new cameras after a while for each version of PSE. (bbstx, if you didn't know, every camera model has its own proprietary raw format and the raw converters in editing products must be updated for each new camera model as it comes out. Adobe has always been fond of cutting off support for new cameras in older versions of their software as soon as a new version of a program comes out, although they aren't as draconian about it with PSE as they are with LR and PS.)

There are also some glitches with older versions of PSE if you are running win 10 or Yosemite or higher on a mac. Adobe has no interest in fixing these and will not.

On the plus side, there are some really good books on older versions of PSE that don't have editions for PSE 14and 15.

I wrote a long message and it isn't showing up. Perhaps I failed to hit SEND. Here is the gist of it, as well as I remember:

Affinity looks great and the price can't be beat - $50! Unfortunately, it is for Macs and I use a PC. I tried a Mac once and never could get the hang of it. I have an iPhone and an iPad, but the Mac eluded me. I have signed up to be notified of the Beta version of Affinity for iPads.

I went to the website for Lightroom, clicked on Buy, and was taken to a page to subscribe to Creative Cloud. So, it looks like you are right, wb, No more standalone Lightroom. I suppose the good news is that Lightroom is only $9.99/mo.

I tried Pixlr last night for a few minutes. I never could make it work. It was late and I was tired. I will try again today when I am fresher.

Oh rats. I know they are planning on affinity for PC and I thought they had already released it. Sorry about that.

Actually it appears you can buy LR from amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Adobe-65237578-Photoshop-Lightroom-6/dp/B00VWCKJVA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1476030638&sr=8-3&keywords=adobe+lightroom

Just be sure it's "sold by and shipped from" amazon and not a third party.

ETA, there's a free trial here:

https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom.html?promoid=KLXLX

Thanks, wb. I never thought of looking at Amazon. I only looked on the Adobe website. One of the big pluses for LR or PS for me is the number of tutorials available. There are scads!

There is an Affinity Designer (I believe that is what it was called) for PCs, but to my untutored eye, it looked more like something used for graphic design than for photo editing.

ETA: do you think I ought to sign up for the free 30 day Lightroom CC trial to see if I am going to be able to grasp the ins and outs of editing? Do you think Lightroom CC is comparable to the Lightroom purchased from Amazon?

LR CC is the same product, but it may have updates that the standalone version doesn't have.

Yes, you're right about Affinity Designer. It's more equivalent to Adobe InDesign than to any photo editor.

Incidentally far the best book for LR is the one by Martin Evening, but it may not be the best choice for a beginner. But if you decide to go for LR and you stick with it, keep that in mind.

Also remember that LR is first of all an image management system, a filing cabinet, as it were. The editing stuff got added later.

I forgot to ask what camera you are using.

DD tells me they have a Canon 6d.

You'd be okay, then. The standalone version is LR 6 and the 6D requires at least LR 4.3.

Thanks!

Are you planning on using the software or your daughter? You mentioned layers baffle you so unless you're really going to get into photo editing I would avoid paying for Photoshop. It's a giant that does everything. For the few things you mentioned wanting to do I'd look at Pixlr Editor or Gimp. I have and like Cyberlink Photodirector. Also look at Lightroom. If you're going to pay for something use a free trial to see if you can make it work.
Congratulations to your DD!

Thanks, sheeisback. Yes, I'll be the one doing the editing. DD has her hands full, as does DSIL, tending to babies. DD called a professional photographer today, so the heat is off trying to get good newborn pictures for the announcements. I have a little breathing room to look at various editing programs.

I've begun to understand the concept of layers. I played with Pixlr Editor for a while yesterday. There aren't a lot of tutorials online for Pixlr. Some of the best I found were for grammar school children (hmmm...I think that says it all).

Haven't tried Gimp yet.

My camera came with editing software, is there a reason you do not want to use Canon's?

Jim, the camera belongs to DD and DSIL. If it came with editing software, they haven't mentioned it. I'll ask DSIL next time I visit them. Thanks for the tip!

Real quick...

I wish I could take the photos for you. I enjoy newborn photography.

FWIW, I would stay away from any disk that comes with a camera. They're good at making cameras not editing software. My old computer got all kinds of glitchy afterwards and that wasn't the first time I've heard of it happening. An issue for both Canon and Nikon.

Digital Photo Professional isn't bad, but it's meant mostly just for converting raw files to standard image formats (tiff, jpg), and is a bit limited for additional editing (although you can do most necessary adjustments in conversion).

For sure they would have gotten that.