I could use some help and advice. I'm about to make a lot of changes. First, I'm about to jump ship on PCs in my personal life and switch to Mac. Second, I'm about to buy my first DSLR in anticipation of a massive trip on which I want to take endless photos. This trip will range from the streets of Rome to an African Safari. Third, I want to learn how to use Photoshop and in learning how to use Photoshop I intend to try and shoot in RAW (or RAW+JPEG) so that I can truly maximize my Photoshop experience.

So here's the thing... I want to use iPhoto as a general place to store and organize all my photos. I currently use Picasa (practically an iPhoto ripoff). I'll install the Picasa add-on to iPhoto so I can continue to use Picasa web albums. I realize most people here probably use Flickr but Picasa is just easier for all my computer illiterate friends and family to deal with. My understanding is that iPhoto will also be useful for integration into all things Mac, from an AppleTV to an iPhone. Bottom line: iPhoto will be my low-level organization and sharing tool. As for PS... I can get it dirt cheap (legally!) and I would simply like to learn to use it anyway. What better time than when I'm going to have hundreds of pictures from a trip of a lifetime.

So... is there any reason to also use Aperture?

The reason I'm thinking about it is that I believe Aperture can work with photos by default in RAW form. iPhoto can't. Aperture can make albums and events like iPhoto even if the photos are still in RAW format. As for Photoshop... is it any good at storing and organizing photos in RAW form like Aperture can, or is it more purely for editing. If PS has a way of storing and organizing RAW into albums or events and whatnot, then maybe I can just dump pictures onto the Mac into PS and work with them there as I get the chance. Then, I can eventually export them to iPhoto in another format. However, if PS does not have a convenient feature of storing and organizing RAW, then maybe Aperture would serve a purpose of doing that. Once in Aperture I can take the time to slowly edit the good shots in PS and then export to iPhoto so that I have my "finished" photos and albums in iPhoto but still have all my photos conveniently organized in Aperture.

I realize I'm biting off a lot at once, but I like to jump into new things head-first. I will have a good 6 months to work on my PS and DSLR skills before this trip to make it all worth while. (I have used PS briefly several years back on a PC, and I am fairly proficient from a few years back on old-school SLRs and I will hopefully have a steep learning curve).

So, all three programs or is that just unnecessarily duplicative and I should just go with iPhoto + PS CS4?

Thanks.