Photoshop Elements vs Lightroom

[Pierre Falzon]

I've been using Elements for the past 3 years and heard and seen some of the benefits of Lightroom. I use Elements to organize, rate and edit my images. Lightroom seems to do these things faster and more efficiently. I don't want to have to use Photoshop CS3 as I find that Elements does everything I need to do. Can anyone tell me if Lightroom does everything Elements 7 does and if so is it worth switching.

Thanks

Pierre

[kirbinster]

They are different. Elements is a bit-level editor while Lightroom is not. Lightroom can probably do 95% of what you would do in elements, but not everything. Lightroom is a digital assett management program that also does much editing. Check Adobe's site for more detail. You can use an external editor (like elements) from within Lightroom, so things you can not do can be parsed back and forth.

[Indigo November]

FWIW, I tried lightroom 3 beta and hated it. It was incredibly slow, like slower than slow.
I don't know how it compares to elements because I couldn't use it, it was that slow.
Maybe they've fixed that issue.............. I'd stick with elements though.

[gturner]

I used Elements a handful of times since lightroom arrived on my computer 8 months ago.

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

...Elements is a bit-level editor while Lightroom is not..

Can you expand on this a little more for my education? I've been using Lightroom for 6 months and I'm thinking of switching to Elements for a few reasons. I just don't do any batch editing which works well in LR and I'd rather have more flexibility (if that's the case with Elements) plus, Elements is just cheaper which is always a good thing.

[Mr Guy]

Originally Posted by artofindigo

FWIW, I tried lightroom 3 beta and hated it. It was incredibly slow, like slower than slow.
I don't know how it compares to elements because I couldn't use it, it was that slow.
Maybe they've fixed that issue.............. I'd stick with elements though.

My experience is that Beta 1 was slower than Lightroom 2 (free trial), but the Beta 2 is as responsive as I'd expect it to be on my machine, given that it's loading hundreds of photographs at once.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by Tyler

Can you expand on this a little more for my education? I've been using Lightroom for 6 months and I'm thinking of switching to Elements for a few reasons. I just don't do any batch editing which works well in LR and I'd rather have more flexibility (if that's the case with Elements) plus, Elements is just cheaper which is always a good thing.

Not sure why cheaper is an issue if you already have both? Anyway Lightroom does almost everything that most people need to do for most photos. The brush tool and gradient brush really cover many of the things people used to do in photoshop. Plus since you can link to elements as an external editor I don't understand why you would want to switch to just elements.

[lputman]

This is good reading regarding this topic. It's a little older as it references CS3, but the message is still the same.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - Who Needs It?

[Pierre Falzon]

Thanks for the info and the link. I think I will stick with Elements 7 for now.

Pierre

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by kirbinster

Not sure why cheaper is an issue if you already have both?

Sorry - I forgot to mention that I'm using the 3.2 beta which is free for a few more weeks. After that I'll have to decide if I want to pay to continue using it or buy Elements. I should have been more clear in my first post.