[No photos with this entry; sorry.  Including them seemed even more gratuitous than usual, given the subject matter. J]

Some photographers seem to pick up every postprocessing software package that comes down the pike.  I’m not one of them, but I know more than a handful of people who fit this description to the letter.

There are two principal reasons why I’m so parsimonious about software.  The first is cost.  There are a lot of very, very capable programs out there, but most—not all, but most—of them are anywhere from pretty expensive to very expensive.  The most obvious example is the mother ship itself—Adobe’s Photoshop, the industry standard in photo editing for years.  Even “serious” photographers (whatever that means) don’t need to use Photoshop for image editing purposes, but for legacy users like myself (I’ve been using PS for more than a dozen years now), there weren’t many—if any—viable options when we got started and it’s difficult to face the prospect of starting over with something new.  The prospect of doing just that recently inched up a notch or two, however, with the decision by Adobe to end perpetual licensing of Photoshop.  The program was already quite expensive, but the new model sees the prospect of securing impermanent rights to use the software for a rate that amounts to nearly $200 (US) a year.  Some of us, myself included, have decided to sit tight and continue to use the final perpetual license version of Photoshop for the foreseeable future.  At least we’ve jumped off the upgrade train for a while.

The software cost conundrum doesn’t’ end with Photoshop.  There are countless applications, many of them designed as plug-ins for Photoshop, others as standalone programs, out there and the cost of them adds up quickly.  You can very quickly find your pocketbook much, much lighter if you’re not careful, partly because there are so many different things you can buy and partly because, once you start buying, you can find yourself “needing” to upgrade the software every so often.

The other main concern I have about accumulating a lot of editing-related software is that it really encourages the user to become a jack-of-all-trades and master of none.  There are exceptions, of course, but most of these programs are pretty sophisticated.  Becoming a facile user of them frequently requires moving beyond a “cookbook” approach.  A quintessential example involves any application that includes presets.  Presets are often great starting points, but milking an application to anything approaching its full potential almost always involves far more than merely applying default settings.  And that, in turn, requires experimentation which involves spending time with the program in question.  It’s next to impossible to become truly facile with 10 or 12 pieces of software.

What do I use?  Over the 12-odd years that I’ve been involved with the digital darkroom, I’ve gradually acquired a fairly small set of tools that I utilize for my post-processing work.  I’ve mentioned Photoshop, which I’ve been using since 2001.  I use Nikon Capture NX2 for RAW conversion—I’ve used that (and its predecessors) for 10 years.  For HDR work, I use Photomatix Pro, which has been in my software stable for seven years.  I use AutoPanoPro to assemble panoramas; I’ve been using that program for five years.  For focus stacking, I use Helicon Focus, which has been in my quiver for six years.  The only plug-ins I own for Photoshop are the collection of applications that are part of the Nik suite.  These are by far the newest tools in my box; after years of resistance I finally broke down and purchased the suite earlier this year after Google purchased the programs and cut the sale price by approximately 75%.

That’s it.  Including the plug-ins as a separate entity, that’s six programs in total.  I’ve downloaded and fiddled with a few others, but if I’m not prepared to commit myself to a package long-term, I don’t buy it, for all the reasons I’ve laid out above.  (Alert readers will note that I don’t use Lightroom, for instance.  I simply find it redundant, given my needs.)

Oh, and here’s another little tip—you don’t always have to upgrade the software to the latest version.  Depending on the upgrade policy attached to the software in question and new features that are included, I often stick with the version I have.  The latest may be the greatest, but it’s not always all that much better than whatever it’s replacing.

If you have endless financial and temporal assets at your disposal, I guess you can afford not to be particularly choosy.  As I said at the outset, I know a number of people who seem to fit that description.  But if you’re like most of us, you’ll probably want to resist temptation and keep your software purchases to a minimum.  You’ll be a better photo editor and your wallet will thank you.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.