Quote Originally Posted by Geoff79 View Post
... It’s just a hobby I’m quite passionate about, and for what I do in PP, free stuff is more than adequate for my requirements....
Yep .. I'm hearing 'ya, that's for sure.
We seem to be travelling up the same creek ... it's just that my canoe didn't come with paddles(long Nikon related saga!).

I'm loathe to pay for stuff I don't really need either, and have been burned with paying for supposedly high quality software too(i.e. Lr4 back then) .. and it was a POS back then .. and having trialled v5 found the same thing.
I didn't reinstall it on my new PC, and resigned myself to the fact that LR4 was $100 down the drain.

I've tried a few $100+ softwares, just that none were as good for my (lazy @$$ed) PP style.
I liked Capture One tho .. just that I found it hard to edit without that U-Point processing style.
I was one of the very few that stuck with Nikon's CaptureNX2 with it's U-point process workflow .. why I'm interested in this DXO Photo Lab software too now.

I have no problem paying for stuff, even if it is only hobby related expenses. Gear hass cost me much more than software over the years, and Ii use the software more so than the total cost of the peripherals I've bought for my camera(ie. lenses/tripods/flashes/etc).
So software is something I always use .. and hence paying for it has never been a point of contention for me.. my only criteria is that if I do pay for it, then it's should work better than the other software I have/had(why LR was such a disappointment).

The only issue with sticking with old non supported software(ie. CS6 in your situation and CNX2 in mine) is future possibilities for editing.
With CS6 you'd really need to convert to a format that's workable, and new model raw files aren't compatible in CS6 via ACR now. So you need an intermediary format .... basically it gets messy and bloated.
And the DNG converter is not a real option .. Adobe made sure they buggered that option as best as they could!
For users of CNX2, which is Nikons' raw file editor in the CS6 realm is a dead end, and basically the same situation as CS6 .. new model cameras are not supported.
Could use tiff format conversion, but back to the messy/bloated workflow as above with CS6.(ie. not a real option, other than it is an option as a worse case scenario).

The basic crux of the reply is that at some point in the future, our old redundant software(your CS6 and my CNX2) will have to be 'let go' and replaced with something else. This is not going to be an option, it will be a fact.
Of course we have time, no way to know at what point in the future that those software will just not load onto whatever OS we'll be using in the future .. but a situation like that is inevitable.

This is why I'm always on the lookout for software that may do something well, even if it has to cost a little bit.