What
I need from a photo-editing program:
- layers;
- masks;
- (warping) transform;
- non-destructive adjustment layers:
-curves
-exposure
selective color
-hue/saturation
-black & white
-photo filters
-selective color
-threshold - masks on non-destructive adjustment layers;
- healing brush;
- clone stamp;
- magic wand selection tool;
- magnetic lasso;
- dodge and burn tools;
- text;
- gaussian blur (primarily for masks);
- puppet warp (make a mesh of an area and move each point);
- large file support (equivalent to "psb");
- healing brush;
- 16-bit support;
- HDR-format (32-bit floating point) support;
- canvas re-sizing and image resizing;
Photoshop CS5.5 Extended meets my needs perfectly. (I'm not even sure I need "extended", except for the fact I will need to do some 3D object texturing soon.) I don't want to upgrade even to CS6, let alone this "creative cash cow" monstrosity.
I just hope that there is no clash of CS5.5 with an operating system upgrade, ever. It will take a while until GIMP gets the feature set I need, and then it will take time to learn GIMP in the same way I extensively know Photoshop.
I really despise Adobe management right now. What a bunch of MBA bozos.
