Got LR3, could you do with Photoshop

[amtaylor]

Just wondering, those of you who do paid work, could you manage with LR3 alone or do you think you need some version of photoshop because I'm thinking of getting Lightroom and only using it. I got the trial but I think I will need more than 30 days to get used to it properly and find out a lot of things it can do.

 

[ianmarsh]

What little paid work I have done has been based solely on Lightroom (2) and I find it a great program. But it very much depends on the work you plan to do, I'd expect.

 

[Musicman]

[checks stats in LR3]

Depends on your style, but based on my experience, 99% of the time you don't need Photoshop with LR3:

25 photos out of 2550 that were shot on digital since the beginning of June have been touched by PSCS5, and a most of those were when the RAW conversion was done with RPP instead of Lightroom. 3 of the others were stitched panoramas.

Photoshop is definitely essential for my scanned film photographs, though.

I should probably add that 90% of what I do is unpaid.

 

[daz103]

I use Lightroom for 90% of my work, but for paying customers (especially Models and advertising) I give them a once over in photoshop. perhaps doing a few more detailed adjustments, but to be honest I could probably do the work in Lightroom if I learnt.

 

[Chappers]

Look at the work that you do. If you need to do pixel editing at all then you'll find Lightroom short in that department. However as other posters have said you can do 90+% of your work in Lightroom without any help from Photoshop.

Now Photoshop's ACR module does have the same engine as Lightroom's develop module. so this may be an option if you consistently need to work at the pixel level on images. However as you have discovered Lightroom is a lot more than just it's develop module. An alternative is to look at Elements as a supplement to Lightroom. I've not used Elements myself for a number of years as I have Photoshop anyway. But it may be worth looking at a the latest version as it does seem to fairly comprehensive and may have all the pixel editing tools you need. Alternatively the free GIMP may be what you eed for those occasional pixel editing jobs.