Elements vs lightroom vs cs

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rob_c

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Rob
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Have used both pse and cs, find I dont need the extras cs has over elements most of the time.

Where does lightroom fit in? I have had a quick look at the adobe site but it is a bit marketing biased, interested in real world users opinions.

Is lightroom a replacement for a full editor or is it more for cataloguing and sorting?
 
Lightroom is a sort of cross between bridge and camera raw from photoshop, it has the slightly limited editing tools of camera raw with a cataloguing and sorting added, it also has a decent printing and web modual. Imho lightroom is best at quick editing large numbers of images and batch editing.
Why not try the free trial and see if it fits into your workflow.
 
Photoshop is everything but only 30% need everything the Lightroom is enought for the most of the works. you can use Lightroom as Bridge, and then export to photoshop.
 
rob_c said:
Have used both pse and cs, find I dont need the extras cs has over elements most of the time.

Where does lightroom fit in? I have had a quick look at the adobe site but it is a bit marketing biased, interested in real world users opinions.

Is lightroom a replacement for a full editor or is it more for cataloguing and sorting?
Click to expand...


For some people lightroom is all they need. I really like it and probably do about 90% of my post in lightroom. But I use PhotoShop for things like cloning work, portrait retouching the final sprinkle of fairy dust so to speak.

Lightroom is great for organising images and us geared totally toward photography, its a time saving tool when you work on a large number of images. I would say its a lot quicker to learn an get good results than PhotoShop for a beginner, it has a pretty good print and web module, you can make slideahows and photo galleries for the web, you can even publish to flicker and Facebook etc from lightroom.

Some photographers use lightroom only now for all their post. I personally use lightroom and CS5 together and they have become an indispensable part of my workflow.
 
Lightroom allows you to "develop" and manage digital images. I.e. it allows you to play with contrast/curves etc (it allows you all the manipulation options of Adobe Camera Raw)... whilst also tagging them in a database so you can search for things like "select all pictures taken on a 5D2 with a 70-200 F4L and tagged 'Wildlife'". It also manages import and export of images to social networking sites, printers and web spaces.
Photoshop encompasses all the simple transforms in lightroom (contrast/curves/levels etc.. but none of the managing/tagging/import/export options) and also allows you to further transform, merge images, cutout images and generally edit their contents. Look at the "How would you edit this picture thread" and all the edits have been done with a PS like tool as Lightroom can't cutout/composite images.
Elements is effectively a cutdown version of Lightroom + Photoshop (it has the most useful bits of both in there but the interface is different).

I have both Lightroom and PS. I use LR for 95% of my image "development", but need PS for the other 5%.
 
never did try elements but lightroom and PS is pretty much sufficient for my workflow, PS for final touch up on blemishes and face smoothening ( sometimes ). but still lightroom gets on my nerve sometimes for its lengthy time consuming to load individual photo details compared to bridge, but otherwise lightroom is a fav to me .
 
Is it true that Lightroom does not have masks, layers or filters ?
If so that is a bit of a shortcoming.
 
arclight said:
Is it true that Lightroom does not have masks, layers or filters ?
If so that is a bit of a shortcoming.
Click to expand...

Yes lightroom doesn't have layers proper masks (it does have a selective ajustment brush tool similar to cameta raw) I'm not exactly sure what you mean by filters but it hasn't got the "filter" you have in photoshop like artistic or distort but it does have sharpening etc. It also has presets which can apply some effects. It also doesn't have a proper curves, it has some curves but you can't ajust the individual channels. Image ajustment wise it's more ot less the same as the camera raw you have in CS5.
 
If you've got PS then basically you have all the lightroom tools in Camera RAW. Lightroom wraps the same set of editing tools up with a database system to keep track of where your images are, and allow you to catalog them in multiple ways. You don;t buy lightroom for it's editing capabilities, although they are often all many people need, but for the catalog.

The best bet by far is to download the trial from the Adobe website and try it out. If you're not using any catalog software at the moment it may take a little while to get used to all the options, and the way it works, but most people I find don't go back once they have tried something like Apeture or Lightroom.
 
I use LR as the hub of my workflow.

I make as many adjustments in LR as possible and still use it access PS to make any further adjustments which is helpful for version control as it keeps copies once adjusted in PS and you can create virtual copies of your originals.

I very rarely access the images directly outside of LR as it will 'bite you' in the future.

I used to use Bridge for version control together with PS for all adjustments, I then migrated to LR and have never looked back, PSE to me is too confusing but that's probably because I have always use the full blown versions of PS.

Steve
 
I'm a big Lightroom fan, I only use Photoshop when I need content aware fill or layers.

Try it with the images from one shoot and see how you get on.
 
Thanks for everyones replies, I think that I wouldn't really benefit from LR at the moment, I don't feel the need to Have the advance cataloguing it gives and i am happy with the editing I currently do (I use DPP for RAW conversion)
 
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