This site is :

"The only and indispensible. Keeps getting better. And now there is version 7—an upgrade I am not sure of. Seems to me version 7 was designed to fill the need for a Mac OS X native product. This is what I use so I will get it. If that and the fact that I teach this stuff weren't true, I might not upgrade to 7. Heck, I might still be using v.5.5 with ImageReady. Adobe thinks fairly well about what we need to do and how to do it, but the new features of v.7 are not that impressive. The healing brush (symbol is a band-aid) means you don't have to be very good with the clone stamp."

Jump to 2015 and now there aren't really any versions. And you don't own it, you rent it-- a software seller's wet dream. Adobe's profits are up now that you have to pay just to open legacy files. In all fairness, for a big design shop, what Adobe has done is probably a dream come true. No more deploying upgrades, no more incompatibilities between different installs but for a small design shop you are permanently locked into monthly payments and if those payments are not made, POOF! goes the software. Don't let your shop fall on hard times, because if you can't pay Adobe, you can't even open your files. Talk about a strangle hold. Fortunately I have two old computers, one PC and one Mac that are loaded with software and as long as I can keep them running I can access my old files.

As I said above Photoshop is a great product. Many of the new features are making compositing very easy and in 3D. With the price and the fact I'm retired I moved to Photoshop Elements.

One thing that intrigues me the most about NIK is the ability to take a color photo and do really serious manipulations in producing a B&W image.

At the time of exposure a photographer can apply any of several filters to lighten foliage, darken skies and create other effects on B&W film negatives. Unfortunately applying a filter at the time of exposure locks that effect into the negative. If for instance a Wratten 25 filter was applied to darken skies but in the darkroom this turns out to be too much darkening, possibly a Wratten G would have been preferable, the which protects froreffect is hard to change.

Even in Photoshop changing the effect on the B&W scan is not straightforward, but with a color scan (image) a photographer can apply any filter effect in the digital darkroom with ease with NIK. It is like having the original scene locked in to play with, provided a good saturated color images is there to work with.