Yeah, the idea is that you get back from your shoot with hundreds of photos, you import them into Lightroom/Aperture where you can scroll through them all easily, selecting one and quickly rotating/cropping, or correcting exposure and white balance, then you move onto the next, rating each as you go whilst discarding some (except they just get hidden from the default view).

Once you've pruned hundreds of shots down to a dozen or so you end up with a nice library of your best shots. Then, if you want to something fancy with one of them, you fire up Photoshop.

Makes sense.

Oh yea, put like that it definately makes good sense.

So..which one should I buy first, then?

Photoshop.

Unless you plan to do several photoshoots with hundreds of photos at once and feel the need to browse through them and crop them in a timely manner.

In north america, the most widespread pixel imaging software is photoshop. At least in the professional world. In europe I believe its Corel Draw. You'll run into one of these two most of the time. Learning others is sort of a personal choice, but I would recommend against it. Print technicians cannot help when they don't know the software you use, and our job is to know the mainstream programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Freehand, Quarkxpress, Corel Draw, etc. Not fancy-pants software like Lightroom, or idiotic programs like Publisher, Powerpoint, Visio, Paintshop Pro, Paint, etc.

And for god's sake, don't you ****ing dare send me a business card designed in Excel. But I digress.

Point is : Your best bet is to use the software used most by professionals. Then you are guaranteed to find a solution to your problems when you need the help, and you are certain not to be met with a "This format is not supported" or "The effects you use are not compatible with our RIP" when its time to print. In short, your chances of success are higher.

Just me who still uses PS7?

I have PS7 in addition to PS CS4.

PS7 sure isn't as flashy, but it gets the vast majority of jobs done. FOR MEH.

thank you det.

i get hung up on details that it does so awesomely, that i get frustrated and i just want to yell "TRY IT! ITS AWESOME!"

This this for the love of God, this. Or any Microsoft program, they really aren't "print friendly". I'm tired of amateurs sending in work for publication that is supposed to be "camera ready" and instead I have to spend time fixing colors, resizing, and often re-setting entirely for legibility/resolution issues. I hate my job.

After being required to use it for my job, I can't believe Publisher is ever used by anyone for anything ever.

I hate when people submit things put together in publisher.

I've solved the problem :

If it was created in any microsoft software, be it word, publisher, powerpoint, excel, vision, frontpage, I request that export their files as pdf. This is generally useless, since it will be all too small and lack the required resolution, but it makes them go through yet another troublesome step before being finally told that their file simply does not work and that they will ultimately have to redo it in one of the appropriate software, format and resolution or find someone who can. I also give them a clear explanation as to why these programs are simply not suited for print.

This usually gets the message across and it makes them think once, twice and thrice on using one of those programs to design something in the future.

I don't have the freedom to do that. I'm barely even allowed to talk to customers. I can't even convince people that when you've typed a 2-page document it's easier for you to email it to us, or bring the file in on a disk. If you just went through the trouble of typing it, why would you ask someone else to type the whole thing over again? It makes no sense. People are dumb.

Yea, I hear you. You'd think thinking for two seconds would make them realize that. There are simply no pros to having someone retype your work, and a rather hefty list of cons.