Lightroom vs. Elements

[amy_bb]

Ok, so I'm all over the boards today......


I have the opportunity to purchase Adobe Lightroom 3 for the student price of $99 (full verision) as I'm taking 2 photo/graphic design classes at the local community college.

I currently have Adobe PSE8 on my computer.

Is ALR 3 a huge upgrade in functionality for photo processing? More RAW options? Better portrait doo dads? Noise reduction?

Would you buy it for that price or just stick w/Elements.

[Doug Sundseth]

I have Elements and Photoshop CS4. I paid twice that and haven't regretted it for an instant.

Lightroom is a huge advantage to my workflow. It's designed for people dealing with many photos at a time and handles about 98% of my editing needs. The other 2% (photos that require pixel level editing, compositing, layers, or pano-stitching, mostly) go to PS.

Your experience might be different, obviously. If you want to spend a lot of time with each image, it might not be for you. But if you do a lot of sorting, rating, or batch editing, or if most of your photos just need general edits rather than pixel-level edits, I can't recommend it highly enough.

[Rentham]

To Doug's point, LR is fundamentally different than PSE or PS.

Lightroom (and Aperture) are cataloging applications that can do Parametric Image Editing (PIE). That means the changes are done by recording instructions instead of altering the actual pixels in the file. Photoshop and similar applications are pixel editors, best suited for working on one image at a time. While the image editing features can be robust in LR, one of the primary functions is the ability to manage your image archive and streamline your workflow through batch syncing, keywords, metadata, collections, etc.

Anyone who is serious about photography will eventually need both cataloging PIE and pixel editing applications.

[mosgood]

I have both Lightroom 3 & Elements 7. I upload my photos to LR to do basic editing. It automatically exports my photos to Elements when I'm done for any additional tweaking. If I choose... I don't always need to do more work on my photos.

There's quite a learning curve at the very beginning, due to the fact that LR 3 uses different words for uploading (import) & saving files (export). Plus the the layout of the screen is unique from Elements. Now that I've had it for a while, & have had a chance to become familiar with it...I have come to really like how it works. I still haven't learned about everything it can do, but for $99.00, you can't go wrong. Great program, once you get used to it.

[Izzy]

I use LR3 and PS CS3

I think the LR3 had a very short learning curve. Some say hard I say easy

[nickbedford]

I stand by Lightroom (or any of it's competitors) as one of the fundamental tools a photographer should be using, first. When it comes to the things you can't do in Lightroom, then you right click on the photo and hit "Edit in Photoshop". It's all seamless and it's exported into Photoshop as a high bit-depth (16-bit) TIF image (I think that's the default).

If you keep the Photoshop edit in 16-bit then you can go back into Lightroom after editing and apply adjustments without losing quality due to the high accuracy of the source data, similar to the original raw file you may have used.

Lightroom for most purposes makes the process of "developing photos" quick and much easier than in Photoshop, especially since you don't need to deal with ACR every time you open a raw file. I do all my brush work and spot removal in Lightroom because it's instantly reversible and each little adjustment can be selected and changed on the fly. Not as efficient in Photoshop.

For example, in Lightroom, white balance is a slider away. Where's white balance in Photoshop? Levels? I always cringe when I tried to use that.

Basically that's my reasoning for pushing Lightroom over PS so much. But then, you can still do significant edits in Lightroom then move to Photoshop when you need those extra tools and operations.

The same could be said for Aperture if you're that way inclined, but I'm not sure how it works with Photoshop editing.

Here is a portrait edit entirely done in Lightroom (forgive the test nature of the shot). This uses basic settings adjustments, brushes and spot removal.

Before: Before - Self Portrait | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
After: After - Self Portrait | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

P.S. I'm not an Adobe salesman, I just feel Lightroom is much more essential than PS when it comes to developing and storing photos.

[amy_bb]

Originally Posted by Rentham

To Doug's point, LR is fundamentally different than PSE or PS.

Lightroom (and Aperture) are cataloging applications that can do Parametric Image Editing (PIE). That means the changes are done by recording instructions instead of altering the actual pixels in the file. Photoshop and similar applications are pixel editors, best suited for working on one image at a time. While the image editing features can be robust in LR, one of the primary functions is the ability to manage your image archive and streamline your workflow through batch syncing, keywords, metadata, collections, etc.

Anyone who is serious about photography will eventually need both cataloging PIE and pixel editing applications.

Oooh. Ok, so let's put this in very small words/scenario for me b/c I think I get this but I'm not sure.

Let's say I shoot a ski race and underexpose each shot a bit b/c I need a high shutter speed due to an overly gray day but I don't want my ISO too high b/c the pics get way too noisy (true scenario). I want to do a levels adjustment on each of the 200 photos, some fill light and then, perhaps, saturation adjustments and/or wb tweaking.

Then I decide I want to categorize each shot by the ski club or run taken.

This is what LR3 would help me do?

If I'm way off base here, please give me a real life example so that I can understand more clearly.


Thanks to all for your help so far.

[amy_bb]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

I stand by Lightroom (or any of it's competitors) as one of the fundamental tools a photographer should be using, first. When it comes to the things you can't do in Lightroom, then you right click on the photo and hit "Edit in Photoshop". It's all seamless and it's exported into Photoshop as a high bit-depth (16-bit) TIF image (I think that's the default).

If you keep the Photoshop edit in 16-bit then you can go back into Lightroom after editing and apply adjustments without losing quality due to the high accuracy of the source data, similar to the original raw file you may have used.

Lightroom for most purposes makes the process of "developing photos" quick and much easier than in Photoshop, especially since you don't need to deal with ACR every time you open a raw file. I do all my brush work and spot removal in Lightroom because it's instantly reversible and each little adjustment can be selected and changed on the fly. Not as efficient in Photoshop.

For example, in Lightroom, white balance is a slider away. Where's white balance in Photoshop? Levels? I always cringe when I tried to use that.

Basically that's my reasoning for pushing Lightroom over PS so much. But then, you can still do significant edits in Lightroom then move to Photoshop when you need those extra tools and operations.

The same could be said for Aperture if you're that way inclined, but I'm not sure how it works with Photoshop editing.

Here is a portrait edit entirely done in Lightroom (forgive the test nature of the shot). This uses basic settings adjustments, brushes and spot removal.

Before: Before - Self Portrait | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
After: After - Self Portrait | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

P.S. I'm not an Adobe salesman, I just feel Lightroom is much more essential than PS when it comes to developing and storing photos.

This is very helpful Nick. If you're not currently an Adobe salesman, maybe you can pick up some side work for them b/c you sold me!

[RichardTaylor]

I am not a Lightroom expert, however I can find my way around

Re the adjustments.

You can do the adjustments on one photograph and apply those adjustment (Synchronise) to a group of photographs you select.

You can tag individual photographs ir a group of photographs you have selected.
Then at any time you can select just the photo's you want via the tag.

[SwissJon]

I bought LR3 at more than $99.. I think it's a bargin and worth the money.. I have both LR3 and PS on my computer because I need it for work.. I use LR3 for 99% of my image editing.. $99 is a bargin.

If you don't want it, buy it, then sell the unopened box at a profit.

Oh.. one short coming of LR3 is that it won't get up and make the coffee for you.. But then neither will PSE, so no love lost