As I plod my way through the new Adobe applications, I'm not shocked by how much has changed. I'm more surprised at how little has changed. Considering that the most recent version of Photoshop I used is more than 10 years old, I expected to see big really exciting changes. There are changes, especially in masking images and portraiture, but these are not functions I use much. I take maybe a dozen portraits a year. It's nice to be able to open a closed eye, add hair to a bald pate, and do a better job smoothing out wrinkles, but otherwise, it has most of the same pluses and minuses as the old version.

Maple leaves on the last day of October

It even has the same glitches. Adobe's standard is to not fix it if it is merely annoying customers. If it doesn't make the application stop working and it's just an annoyance? That's your problem. if it makes the application stop working? That they will (probably) fix.

The thing is, I'm relieved. I didn't want to learn a new system. I'm not unhappy with the one I've got. If it weren't for the upcoming changes to the PC operating system and not having any graphic software for the Mac, I'd keep using that old DVD version forever. Sadly, I'm pretty sure it won't keep working forever. I'm surprised it will still install at all.

That this version of Photoshop is so similar to what I'm already using is very good news. It's familiar. I don't have to start from scratch and learn all new menus and symbols. Everything is familiar. It even has the same glitches. I haven't yet been able to get the Workspace set up quite how I want it and I'm not sure it's possible, but I haven't watched every tutorial yet. Maybe the information I need is somewhere in one of those little videos.

Because this is not embedded software, while Microsoft changes its operating system, I won't have to worry about losing my graphics program. The new version found all my Topaz filters. I was going to install them, but Adobe installed them automatically.

The best news for me? I can use this on both the PC and Mac. I was dreading having to use different tools for each machine.

I've got 38,885 photographs lurking in the Lightroom cache. I get a headache thinking about them.

I actually took a few pictures today. Just a few. We've been taking -- between the two of us -- 20,000 pictures a year, most of which don't get used for anything. If I can't control how much we shoot, I need to get far more serious about deleting pictures I know I will never use. I may not have learned much, but I think I've figured out we take too many pictures.

Who thought it was possible to take too many pictures?