I am a watercolor artist who paints from photo references, and I use Photoshop Elements to edit the references to get them as close to my vision for a painting as possible (I combine photos, change colors, alter shapes and sizes, move items, and so on). I am also an amateur photographer who wants to have a simple place to store and organize family photos, and attach text to them that is portable and permanent so a future generation will be able to see what a photograph was about. I have struggled with Apple Photos and iCloud for the last couple of years. I like that they work well within my Apple ecosystem. I don't like the organizing tools. I don't like that you can't attach a paragraph of explanation to a photo and count on it staying with the photo if you export it. I don't like how getting a photo from Photos to Elements is rather clumsy. I thought I found a solution: The Lightroom plan for $10/month. I had already upgraded my iCloud storage to $10/month because of the number of photos I have (almost 20,000), so this seemed a good substitute. This is what I THOUGHT Lightroom would do: 1. I thought it would easily send photos in and out of Photoshop Elements. Unfortunately, I discovered that, unlike Lightroom Classic, it does not export to Elements, only to Photoshop. The Photography plan (also $10/month) does work well with Photoshop, indeed, it comes with Photoshop, but it has only 20GB of Cloud storage, not 1TB as does the Lightroom plan. 2. I thought it would be possible to put explanatory paragraphs in the Metadata that would travel with the photo and be permanent. I'm still not sure if this is true. 3. I thought it would be a good substitute for Photos and iCloud, since it has 1TB space, and with my $10/month I also get Lightroom. Of course I'm now not sure if I really need Lightroom. I am not a pro photographer, after all, and I mostly wanted Lightroom for organization and its Cloud. I bought Lightroom CC with the Lightroom plan, and I even migrated all my photos from Photos to Lightroom. Afterwards I discovered those problems above, so I think I will return it. These are the things I want: 1. A simple, clean, organizing tool. Should I just organize my photos in folders on my computer and use Bridge for my viewer? Should I use the Organizer that comes with Photoshop Elements? Does it really work well? 2. Online backup. Should I just organize by folders, or with the PSE organizer, and use something like Backblaze backup? 3. To put actual text paragraphs in a photo's Metadata, and know that they will travel with the photo and be permanent. It would also be nice to make slideshows from the photographs, to put on Apple TV. 4. A way to easily open photos in PSE. I supposed if I just organize them in computer folders, I can do that. Of course I still want to be able to take pictures with my iPhone camera. Perhaps I should keep Photos and a smaller iCloud just to run the photos through initially before putting them on my computer? I can keep a few photos in Photos, those that I want to show to others on my iPhone. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas? I am out of my depth. I truly appreciate any help. Jan
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