Good old iPhoto or LightRoom?

First off let me start by saying, Photoshop is the most reliable, most advanced photo editing program in the game today. (Gimp is fairly close). With that being said, Photoshop is a program. You program the photo to do what you want. Which means you have to know what you want it to do in the first place to get your results. It’s a blank canvas if you will, for photographers, graphic designers even. Mind you there are actual college courses just for Photoshop that are required for a lot of Art Majors.

iPhoto is for extreme beginners. Not a knock on anyone who uses it, but no professional is seriously going to consider editing through iPhoto. (Maybe for storage though). And you’re right, those pre-made effects do get old are limited. (Hence Photoshops dominance in the market)

With all that being said, I think what you are most after is a place where you can store all your photos and edit within. In this case Lightroom would be your best best. I don’t think you can produce anything psychedelic as far as effects go but definitely a Lightroom is a strong tool for normal photo editing.

Personally what I do, a trick I learned from my photo journalism days is I use Adobe Bridge with my Photoshop. I store all photos in Bridge then edit into Photoshop. Sure it’s an extra step to click CTRL>Export but I don’t lose any capabilities where I would in Lightroom.

I know a lot of companies offer up filters to just slap onto your image. For example, VSCO offers this sort of stuff but with a price.

Anyways here is a good article to go with what you’re looking for

You might want to look at Aperture. It is like Lightroom but made by Apple and does all the advanced stuff (like supporting RAW images) and it is half the price. And it works with your existing iPhoto libraries.

I really, really love @johnpowell.