How to justify the expense of Photoshop

It is quite an investment.  Plus the yearly upgrades are not cheap either ($199).  Photoshop is geared towards professional artists and imaging specialists; whereas Elements is more directed towards the amateur photographer.  I made the initial investment many years ago when it was much less expensive.  The upgrades I do every other year, rather than every year.  It is an incredible piece of software, that I use about 15-20% of the time; the rest of the time I use lightroom or process on my ipad (Photogene).  I haven't used photoshop elements in a long time, but the thing I like the most about the full photoshop is the ability to do layers.  When I have the time and I can remember how to do it, playing around with layers allows me to do some very interesting artistic work with my photography - where the original image is a beginning and not an end in and of itself.  I don't know if Elements has that ability, but if it did that would make it more appealing to me as an alternative to photoshop.  What's nice about the ipad, is that many if the apps now have many of photoshops most popular features; layers, cloning; healing, etc.  I know that working on an ipad is not the same as working on a large monitor, but it does approximate the photoshop experience.  Anyhow, those are my thoughts.  I hope they help.

Daniel

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http://danielsonkin.smugmug.com/