If you can set it up as a business expense then the Adobe program is just the thing. It becomes the cost of doing business and the expense can be passed on to customers or written off. A guy like me can't afford to buy in and Sonar is the only software I plan on constantly upgrading.

I write my adobe subscription off every year.

sharke, i just confirmed, that it does work for the local library system  here it works.  i believe the program is similar across the country so inquire with new York's library system how it is implemented there. The way iit works here is i go to the KCLS (King County library system) and then click Learning & Training > under subject choose Computer Leraning > then select the Lynda link below, enter your library card and PIN.  free training.  Might be worth a try jus toing to your library's website and trying a similar path.

I found a page to sign up for Brooklyn library's Lynda service, but not Manhattan. However I need to look into how to join the library first. In all the years I've lived here I've never found the need. So I'm not sure if you have to give proof of a Brooklyn address to sign up in Brooklyn etc. However I can't imagine it would only be available in certain boroughs so I will call tomorrow and ask. Thanks for the tip, will save me a lot of money if I can sign up (and I believe you also have access to the practice files which are an extra $10 or so on the paid subscription).

Found the link!

http://www.mhklibrary.org.../welcome-to-lynda-com/

Hi Sharke,
 
FWIW, I've had the Creative Cloud subscription for a good while now.
If you use several Adobe applications (especially for business), it's absolutely worth the $50/month.
 
There's so much to learn...
I'm absorbing simple things bit-by-bit.
Someday, my video special EFX will look a whole lot more advanced.  
For now, I have to keep things simple and within my sphere of limited knowledge/ability.

Hi Jim, 
 
Yeah Adobe stuff can get overwhelming if you bite off more than you can chew at a time. There's just so much to learn for each app and not all of it is immediately intuitive. But it's really worth learning it properly because blindly groping around only gets you so far. Years ago I had Lightroom on an old machine and thought I'd pretty much sussed it out. But then I watched the Lynda course and realized I was only scratching the surface. Same thing with Illustrator. The trouble is like any other piece of complicated software, you have to keep using it otherwise it's easy to forget what you've learned, especially with regards to things like keyboard shortcuts. I'm basically going back to Illustrator as a new user, I've forgotten that much. Keeps the old bean occupied though!

sharke, I do tutoring on several adobe products (Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and Audition although i doubt you need help on that one) as part of my business, so i can be of help as well if you have a question. yes, they do include practice files.

 
 
I addition to Dub's kind offer of help, I'd be able to chip in a bit as far as editing photographs goes James. I'm getting up to speed using advanced layer masking techniques to process images in Photoshop, and I'm pretty au fait with most of what you can do in Lightroom.
 
The full subscription would be wasted on me, but I am loving the 'Photography' Plan, which includes Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC. I worked out roughly how much it averages out per annum to purchase every other version or so of Photoshop Elements and every new release of Lightroom, and by my reckoning, it's just a tiny bit more to subscribe to the Photography Plan at £8.57 a month.
 
On the down side obviously, I'll never own the software, although I do have Elements 11 and Lightroom 5 to fall back on if I stop subscribing. On the plus side, I get to use Photoshop instead of Elements with the Plan. As Lightroom 6/CC actually arrived quite a bit sooner than my calculations had accounted for, I'm just about in the black at the moment!
 
 
 
 

Thanks guys, I may well be asking questions. I think Lightroom should come back to me easily enough but I was always a bit rusty with Photoshop, probably because I got so used to Lightroom which has a better workflow for photographers if basic processing is all you need. First thing I need to do though is bring my old Leica out of hiding! I got so lazy what with the general improvement in phone cameras that I stopped carrying a "proper" camera around.