Adobe work flow question

[Diggs72]

Hi I'm fairly new to photography and noticed that Adobe has a few different organizers out there and I am curious as to why and what should I be looking for or using?

I try and shoot raw whenever I can.

They presently have adobe album, light room, photo elements, and bridge. I think I got them all.

Just curious - there is so much out there, and I don't want to miss anything! :D

[smc1377]

Well, I can't speak for Elements, Light Room or Album, but as far as Bridge goes, I use that quite often at work. As a graphic designer, the benefits of a program like Adobe Bridge is that I can preview all sorts of files like jpg, raw, eps, pdf, cdr, etc. Not only that, I can rank them, label them, keyword them, so on and so forth.

When literally have tens of thousands of art in various formats, it's nice to be able to sort, view, label, etc. so that you can easily find what you want later.

Another advantage that I use Bridge for is that it integrates tools from other programs like InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. Say I just took a bunch of product shots in RAW and need to adjust them and jpg them, but I'm already busy working in Photoshop doing something else. I can not only batch convert the files into jpg in Bridge, I can also perform all sorts of adjustments on the first picture and Bridge will apply the adjustments to the rest of the photos before saving them to jpg.

That's just a small example of why I like Bridge.

[Diggs72]

OK I can see that and now that you have mentioned that, I see that elements is a knock off of bridge - just that the taging and ranking is more geared to the home user or family and not production.

But what about light room?

Does anybody have any comments here?

[hitkaiser]

Lightroom is Adobe's response to Apple's Aperture

It is meant for "professional" photographers, ie. photographers who need to go through MANY photos in a structured workflow

However, the most powerful one is always going to be Photoshop with it's RAW Camera plugin (also accesible from Bridge).

Any product with the ending "Elements" means dumbed down version, for "home" users, often with easier interfaces and missing the occasional advanced option/feature.

Bridge is meant for organizing and sorting your media and providing a "bridge" between the different Adobe programs. nonthing more and nothing less.

[jiminyClickit]

Any product with the ending "Elements" means dumbed down version, for "home" users, often with easier interfaces and missing the occasional advanced option/feature.

For the same reasons I wouldn't have a finely-tuned race car to drive to the grocery store, or a $10,000 media center to watch a rental movie, I choose to use either a free download of a good, useful edit program that I can get very good at quickly, or buy a reasonably-priced version of a recognised professional program when my confidence and skill is higher.

"Home" users help pay for the development of improved versions of the expensive programs, and the idea that they are dumbed down shows some lack of understanding. Do you start in First Grade reading Advanced Calculus, or give college students "Dick and Jane?" Read the statements of countless users of PhotoShop who quit in frustration, or just don't know what the terms mean.

Sometimes "home" users join DPS and read about Post Processing.
(My dumbed-down PhotoDeluxe works RAW and converts to 7 other file extensions, plus any filing method I need in the same form as any of the other PC programs use. I downloaded Lightroom's Beta version; it has nothing I need.) To each in their own time.

[Griffin2020]

I use the beta of Lightroom to store, tag and do preliminary processing of my images (I find it easier to do these things in Lightroom, and then just do any major changes needed in Photoshop).

[hitkaiser]

"Home" users help pay for the development of improved versions of the expensive programs, and the idea that they are dumbed down shows some lack of understanding.

Not sure what I'm not understanding, dumbed down doesn't mean for dumb people, it's just easier to use. As for helping paying for development of the expensive programs... It's not a very good strategy to use revenue from one product to "help pay for another", if a product is not producing enough revenue to develop further then that product is failing.


Do you start in First Grade reading Advanced Calculus, or give college students "Dick and Jane?" Read the statements of countless users of PhotoShop who quit in frustration, or just don't know what the terms mean.

OK... To complement your example, having elements is like having Algebra for Beginners. Having non elements is like having Algebra for Intermediate users with Advanced Calculus in the final chapters ready for you if you ever want to learn it or use it.


Sometimes "home" users join DPS and read about Post Processing.
(My dumbed-down PhotoDeluxe works RAW and converts to 7 other file extensions, plus any filing method I need in the same form as any of the other PC programs use. I downloaded Lightroom's Beta version; it has nothing I need.) To each in their own time.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with "home" users and their needs are most often covered with "home" products. However PRO products allow flexibility as you can learn more if you want to.

[jiminyClickit]

The difference between

Any product with the ending "Elements" means dumbed down version, for "home" users, often with easier interfaces and missing the occasional advanced option/feature.

and

Any product with the ending "Elements" means an easier-to-use version, for less experienced users, often with easier interfaces and missing the occasional advanced option/feature.

is that the second doesn't carry the dismissive, disparaging element the first one does, and means the same. Debate will not change the effect, whatever the intent.

[hitkaiser]

Your second paragraph reads like a politically correct statement, I didn't mean to offend anyone by saying "dumbed down version", I do still believe they are dumbed down as they introduce new words to make their effects easier to understand.

Such as in Picasa, there is a slider that controls "fill light", in Photoshop they call it "Exposure" since that is the effect they are emulating.

Anyways, seeing this discussion is going no where, shall we agree to disagree?

[jiminyClickit]

Discussion can bring an exposure of a kind. I'll leave it at #5.

[RainPacket]

Lightroom is Adobe's response to Apple's Aperture

Which I cannot recommend highly enough; it's pretty much the entire workflow, for me, with the occasional trip out into NoiseNinja. (Aperture, I mean.)

That said, it really comes down to what you most want or need in a tool.

Photoshop is the workhorse, for editing individual images at levels a graphic designer might need. (Or to use the analogy suggested by the 'workhorse' comment, Photoshop is a grand prix level show-jumper, like Ian Millar or Nick Skelton might ride in the Olympics.)
Photoshop Elements is the more general-use program for editing, a little more accessible and not quite as much of an investment in either time or money. (To stick with the horse analogy, Elements is like my horse, Derby. Let's just say that Derby isn't exactly going to international Olympic-level competition any time soon! But neither am I, so he works just fine for my riding needs, and we get along fine just riding and working on things twice a week, rather than having to have it dominate my life.)
Moving on, we have Lightroom. Lightroom is, as mentioned, the answer to Aperture. It lets you work with collections of pictures. Organizing them, sorting them, applying changes to entire sets, rejecting and marking. It basically fills the same workflow space as a light-table would for film photographers; they'd put out proofs, X the rejects, circle the keepers, sort out sets, and so on. Then you sort things into a box for the project and stick it in a filing cabinet; Lightroom is the digital equivalent of this. You can do editing, but it's mostly the sort of editing you'd do in a darkroom, not the full-on Photoshop editing. (My horse analogy breaks down at this point, but it worked too well for the first two for me to give it up now! I suppose it's sort of like a really high-class stable, where you keep all the horses, and have all the feed schedules and suchnot written down on a whiteboard? Yeah, I'm stretching now.)
Photoshop Album is just for organizing your pictures. It's really designed for home users, and where Lightroom is for improving the workflow of sorting through proofs and picking what to take back to your clients... Album is basically for putting together the snapshots you took on a trip and burning them to a CD or whatever to show to Aunt Maude. (It's a family farm, rather than a big stable? Okay, I'm REALLY reaching now.)
Bridge is for moving photos around from one tool to another in an efficient manner, or getting them off of a RAW-format camera in the first place. It doesn't care what you're working with or where you're moving, it just wants to get it there intact and with all the associated data. (It's a horse trailer! See, I got a last bit of use from my poor tortured analogy.)

I think at this point, I'd better go to sleep. :)

[jiminyClickit]

RainPacket,

Well-written, to-the-point, courteous as usual, I have printed and will refer to it in the future. No one will be buying another PhotoDeluxe, but it would go between the Sunday rental at the park and a Clydesdale. Also bundled with Canon printer, some clever stable guys shoveling debris.

[RainPacket]

RainPacket,

Well-written, to-the-point, courteous as usual...

What can I say; I work well with horse analogies. ;)

http://static.flickr.com/105/299223090_410a50e611_m.jpg (http://flickr.com/photos/37273045@N00/299223090)

[jiminyClickit]

Is that a right-turn signal?

[Saralonde]

Thanks, Rachel. Well done, even with stretching the horse analogies :) .