Dave of Cape Town

[davewallace2000]

I have been enjoying photography for a few years and have used Picasso as my editing tool. I am thinking that there may be better editing packages out there....... Photoshop keeps coming up. Can someone please advise as to a) what is the best digital photography editing package available, and b) if it is photoshop, which package is the one to go for....... Elements or Lightroom 3?

[dnpayne]

I use photoshop CS4 and CS5 at the moment. It can do anything. I have ordered Lightroom 3, but I haven't installed it yet. I would say if you want to do more photographer oriented editing go with Lightroom. If you want to get into some neater / artistic post processing then go with the full version of Photoshop. Obviously, Lightroom is cheaper.

[NathanFranke]

Photoshop is the gold standard. I've never used Elements, as I understand it it's a pared-down version of the full Photoshop. Lightroom is a different animal entirely. Lightroom offers some editing capability--brightening, darkening, vignetting, for example--but it's generally for editing the entire image. If you want to do edits on just portions of the image, Photoshop is the way to go. If you're doing mass edits for clients, Lightroom is it. I can go through a whole photoshoot for a client (~150 images, giving the client 50 or so keepers) in Lightroom in a couple of hours. In Photoshop, it would have taken a day or several.

[Hill Country Hack]

I know several who use Lightroom for the bulk edits and organization of images. They also have a version of Elements to do the finer work that Lightroom does not offer.

I am not a digital artist and do not manipulate images at the pixel level, therefore, Lightroom fits all my needs.

[andyw]

Originally Posted by davewallace2000

I have been enjoying photography for a few years and have used Picasso as my editing tool. I am thinking that there may be better editing packages out there....... Photoshop keeps coming up. Can someone please advise as to a) what is the best digital photography editing package available, and b) if it is photoshop, which package is the one to go for....... Elements or Lightroom 3?

Depends entirely on what exactly you want it to do.
If you are looking for the best "pixel manipulator" then photoshop cs5 is the standard.
That is for "major" work on images.

If you are looking for something for more basic corrections and cataloguing then Lightroom is the way to go.

Elements is essentially a cut down version of CS5 and is more basic in its approach.
It is fine for most hobbyists and those who just want to have a play.

[Krusty79]

Other options are GIMP, which is very powerful and free and Paint Shop Pro, which is roughly comparable to Elements but costs less.

[RELum]

Originally Posted by Krusty79

Other options are GIMP, which is very powerful and free and Paint Shop Pro, which is roughly comparable to Elements but costs less.

I use PSP is that its VERY buggy. I have PSP Ultimate Photo. It crashes and/or freezes fairly frequently, and I have a pretty decent system (Phenom x4 2.8, 8gb RAM, Radeon 5770 w/ 1gb VRAM). It shouldn't crash on my system, and I keep it up to date with patches. I am going to get rid of it soon and upgrade to Lightroom/CS4 or 5 combo.

Russ