How to justify the expense of Photoshop

I've not used Lightroom but did use earlier versions of PSP and have made my way from PSE8 to PSE10 - a very capable set of functionality and I'm still finding new bits despite 18 months of constant use.) I just bought the combo PSE11 Elements & Premier (primarily to try out some video work) and Topaz DeNoise (so I can stay in PSE - blame Mr Pohl ) both at a give away Black Friday prices. I've tried CS4 briefly but this was a while back, at work, and found the choice of functions was bewildering, if not baffling.

I think you are right to minimise the toolset. The learning curve can be long and hard, especially if the objective is subtley tweak to retain the natural look. Given your preference, I'd stick with Lightroom and forget CS, which is simply too expensive for all but professional work. If there's something you are trying to achieve but do not know how, with the software you own, then ask on DPR.

BTW, you mention Lightroom performance.  Is that an inefficient package or the platform it is running on, or a bit of both? CS is bound to take a lot of resources, so I can't imagine it would run any faster.   I'm just about to upgrade to an SSD to improve load times, then to 64 bit Windows 7 and 8GB or RAM

Good Luck. Stuart