Adobe SW choices

[FredWilson]

I have an Epson 4870 scanner that came with Silverfast AI and Photoshop Elements 2.0.
Looks like Elements, or at least the 2.0 version that I have, doesn't support full 16 bit color depth.

Question is, what, basically, is the difference between Elements and Lightroom and CS5, and do anything of them (I assume CS5 does) support full 16 bit per channel depth ?

Never used any of Photoshop's stuff before, obviously ;)

Thanks,
Fred

[jp]

Elements is a crippled photoshop; last version I used was v6 I think, and it had levels but not curves for instance. It did support 16bit/channel.

Lightroom is for managing/organizing thousands of photos in folders and doing things to them in batches (non destructive editing). I have it, but don't use because most of my digital work is with a Nikon DSLR and Nikon's capture nx2 does a nicer job than lightroom for me at doing things to photos. Lightroom of course does 16bit as well.

CS5 is the photoshop version and of course it does support 16bit.

I use gimp because it's free. It doesnt' do 16bit, but I scan and tweak B&W files in 24 bit color, so 24 bits of B&W is good enough for me for putting pix up on the web. If I were scanning color LF, I would want the 16bit/channel.