First Photoshop followed by Lightroom. Lightroom is for processing jobs and groups of images where Photoshop is for high end detail and retouching work. It’s not an either or situation. Both are (for me) indispensable but very different tools.
I have been using Photoshop since day one and it never ceases to amaze me how deep the program actually is. I don’t think anyone can actually know Photoshop completely. The beauty of the software is you can find 2-3 completely different paths that will solve what ever you can visualize in your head. We seem to be in a Photoshop Renaissance of sorts since now a new generation has grown up on it. I think in the future people will look back and see that Photoshop released a torrent of creative energy in photography and no doubt changed it forever. I am now convinced it has freed photography from the chains of the straight documentary image much like photography freed the painters to move from realism to expressionism, abstraction, surrealism etc. All the “bad Photoshop work” aside. I think these are very creative times in photography and Photoshop is the main engine behind it. If you don”t believe me take a look at Thomas Ruffs interview regarding his new large scale “photograms” (which they are actually not). The work is all computer generated and Photoshopped. We are in a new age so go out and make an image no one has ever seen.
