I would like some advice about whether I should go for Qimage Pro or Qimage Studio. The main reason for considering the Studio version is its ability to handle RAW files - but money is tight and so I want to make sure that spending £20 more will be worth it.

I have taken up photography as a hobby for a year now. I use Panasonic Lumix FZ28 and FZ38 cameras. My printer is HP B8850. I have Photoshop CS4 and have spent some time over the summer trying to get to grips with Adobe Camera Raw. I generally shoot RAW and JPG. In Adobe Camera RAW sometimes I can get the photo looking better than the JPG but sometimes not. Sometimes I do various edits, each time thinking I've made an improvement then I look at the original and see that it's not a lot better!

I had not been happy with the prints from the HP B8850 as they were not as vibrant as my Spyder2 calibrated laptop screen but I just paid out for a custom printer profile from Pure Profiles and it does seem to have improved things. At the same time I have been trialling Qimage and have been very happy with the detail of the prints. I compared a photo of a fly on an apple printed from CS4 and Qimage and there was a noticeable difference in the detail on the back of the fly with Qimage coming out better.

I seem to spend a lot of time trying to learn things from books and the internet when I'd rather be taking photos, not doing too much editing and getting them printed so that I can fill my work room walls with great photos.

So what do you advise?

get a smaller work room 

I expect you will want to use cs4 for editing - if so that in itself is fairly complicated, with a rich tapestry of corrections and effects, etc.- as in acr. It maybe that you find qimage's comparative simplicity more to your liking wrt raw processing, but as with most things you get out what you put in. Of course, with the "is being improved with added features coming along rapidly in each update" that will ultimately end up complicated too - but that's not here and now.

If your photos are 'sort of average' wrt exposure, etc., then the in camera jpg may well be as good as you will need to get, and qimage will probably get you there from a raw file. However if you need to push things around more, then acr will be the way to go, since there are more precise/specific controls available to the user - you just have to learn how to use them.

If money is tight, then stick with acr, (there is actually plenty of good training videos and tutorials for free - maybe you've found the rubbish ones) and if you are not concerned about canvas wraps, etc., then get the cheapest qimage available just for printing. That will keep your workflow simple, you will not be getting a mix of 'sidecar' files, etc. Alternatively, there are ways of upsizing in cs4 which will be good enough for the size of print you can handle, but possibly there are some other  'must have' features in qimage that you think you need. Easy way to find out - as Fred said - download the trial.

Best wishes,

Ray