^ That is indeed a very nice picture !

...for a phone. ;) (but thanks)

subtext: pssst, speeder, get a polarizer.

Photoshop Elements is good for photos and is a lot less expensive if you don't need all the extra stuff and it will let you work with RAW.

There are lots of good post-processing programs, and some are better (e.g. for noise removal) than anything Adobe offers.

If you "buy" an Adobe product, be aware that you'll be paying rent to them for a long time, and they have been called the most ethically challenged software co. out there.

OTOH, no other product does DAM (Digital Asset Mgmt.) and image modifications all in one package as well as Lightroom. I use it, but don't like Adobe as a co.

DAM is basically a big database setup that keeps track of info about the image and its associated metadata. This -should- be part of the OS, and Apple does a pretty good job of it. But, again, you are being locked into system.

I came to love Adobe when they came out with InDesign. QuarkXpress was the only frame-based page design program left after Ventura Publisher went away, and Quark had the worst product support of any company I had ever dealt with. I COULD NOT wait to get away from those bastages. Adobe's Pagemaker wasn't a good page production product, but when Adobe cam out with InDesign they blew the rest of the market away.
I will forever love Adobe for giving us an alternative to Quark.