Hello LR3, goodbye CS5 ?

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testbloke

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Kevin
Edit My Images
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I have now forced myself to download the trial version of LR3. Up till now have been using CS5 and portrait professional plugin but am spending far too long editing. I realise some of this is fixed by getting the images better in camera but would like to become friends with lightroom.
The second factor is cost, lightroom currently on a 30% discount and I have also been playing with NIK softwares suite which I really like. The NIK software is half price for lightroom than it is for CS5.
Therefore, for the cost of the NIK for photoshop, I can get LR3 and the NIK lightroom suite, plan being to phase out CS5, not keep updating.

I know this should sound pretty good in theory, but after many years with photoshop, I just cannot get my head around lightroom and the tools and options seem very limited compareed to CS5. I know many people use it for all there editing so am I just being stubborn.

Basically need the confidence to go ahead with the LR3/NIK option ...
 
I'd say that I do 95-99% of my work in LR, but then for most of my stuff there's no cloning or layers allowed as such.

Basically if you look at LR3 as ACR with a more user-friendly interface, added IPTC options (as opposed to going into PS), direct export and cataloguing, then you aren't far off.

Having said that I wouldn't want to not have some flavour of PS, be it full blown or Elements, for the times that I do need to play about with files.
 
MMM

so buying LR and NIk must come to the 2/3rds of the price, plus youll miss the power of CS5, cant see really why you would but if its going to work for you go for it, dont forget youve already paid for CS5 and portrait professional plugin
 
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I use both. There is so much that I can't do in LR that I can do PS and if I was forced to choose, I would keep PS. I think it depends on how involved your post production is. Portrait plug-ins tend to be available for LR as well so you may not miss CS too much in that respect.

Having said that, LR is super for cataloguing and light weight editing though.
 
Lightroom is not designed to be a replacement for a full editing application but is designed to complement one (obviously Adobe are hoping you'll complement it with PS). Its real strength is in managing large catalogues of images, streamlining workflow, making basic reversible edits and managing final output.

I use both LR and CS5 and find that LR really helps me sort my images, getting rid of the duff ones, quickly identifying the best ones when I have similar images and allows me to rapidly make any basic global edits to large numbers of similar images. In terms of editing it probably does all I need for 90-95% of my images, but the remaining 5-10% are the best ones that I think deserve some special attention and then I need the extra features and power of photoshop itself.

Of course, you can use any editing package with LR so if the cost of upgrading is an issue you could switch to Elements instead.
 
so, will your CS5 be up for sale then :shrug: - I use CS5 myself and no way can you compare it to LR :thumbs: ( in my humble opinion) :thumbs:


Les
 
DemiLion said:
Basically if you look at LR3 as ACR with a more user-friendly interface, added IPTC options (as opposed to going into PS), direct export and cataloguing, then you aren't far off.
Click to expand...
This :thumbs:
 
Yes you'll still need CS5 with Lightroom. It doesn't do pixel editing which you may need to do, but you'll be surprised how much it can do. In fact if I didn't already have CS5 I think I'd be able to get away with Elements to be honest.

If you want a really good tutorial get the Luminous Landscape tutorial on Lightroom. It's not free but not expensive and available as a download. You may not have heard of the two presenters, but trust me they know their stuff

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/lr3.shtml

There is a free 10 min intro so you can check it out.

As well as the LL video, look at a copy of Martin Evenings book on Lightroom 3, plus there are lots of free videos on the web, especially on the Adobe site.
 
The logic was that I had already been hearing so often how LR sppeds up workflow and have heard many people say they only now use lightroom. Then when looking at NIK suite, it annoyed me that the same software for PS was double the cost of the LR version.
I currently use bridge to rate, select and delet, then through camera raw into photoshop. For something like a nightclub, I will batch the raw conversion but for a wedding I am currently doing each image individually.
Int eh studio we still shoot against white almost all the time, paper rolls. There are always wee dirty marks to be removed, this is where I struggle with lightroom, as far as I can see I would still have to use PS to use clone stamp or spot removal tool ?
 
testbloke said:
The logic was that I had already been hearing so often how LR sppeds up workflow and have heard many people say they only now use lightroom. Then when looking at NIK suite, it annoyed me that the same software for PS was double the cost of the LR version.
I currently use bridge to rate, select and delet, then through camera raw into photoshop. For something like a nightclub, I will batch the raw conversion but for a wedding I am currently doing each image individually.
Int eh studio we still shoot against white almost all the time, paper rolls. There are always wee dirty marks to be removed, this is where I struggle with lightroom, as far as I can see I would still have to use PS to use clone stamp or spot removal tool ?
Click to expand...

I'm no expert on LR either still very much learning, but you can clone & heal in lightroom, pretty sure if you have a dust buny on your sensor you can batch clone it out of all your shots, im sure i saw a tutorial on this once:thinking:
 
So, if ps is not being sold off, better to get lr & Nik suite for lightroom or just Nik suite for ps. Works out about same cost ...
 
Depends what you shoot. If you end up with loads of images that need organising (esp. long term) Lightroom is brilliant. You can mass edit, rename, organise, and do most of the things you will ever want to do to an image. Its failings are: No layers, no selections, masks etc. The gradient and brush tools go a long way to making it a very good product. It does what it says o the tin really - if you could do it in a dark room you can do it in Lightroom

PS comes into its own for composits, layers, selections and the like

The NIK software sits well with both

For editing weddings, LR saves me days. I maybe put a handful of shots into PS too
 
Richard King said:
Depends what you shoot. If you end up with loads of images that need organising (esp. long term) Lightroom is brilliant. You can mass edit, rename, organise, and do most of the things you will ever want to do to an image. Its failings are: No layers, no selections, masks etc. The gradient and brush tools go a long way to making it a very good product. It does what it says o the tin really - if you could do it in a dark room you can do it in Lightroom

PS comes into its own for composits, layers, selections and the like

The NIK software sits well with both

For editing weddings, LR saves me days. I maybe put a handful of shots into PS too
Click to expand...

wedding, saves days ... This is what I keep hearing but cannot get my head around why ? Can you please explain lr workflow for a wedding shoot ?
 
Kevin

I don't know if this helps. I don't do weddings but I can come back from an editorial shoot with a few hundred images that need sorting and classifying. The workflow may be similar.

I import the images into Lightroom, not too different from bridge. I then batch rename them, again similar to what you can do in bridge.

Then Back up TWICE... yes I am paranoid.

Then I go to grid view and quickly go through the images deleting the obvious rubbish.
Now in grid view I start to select the images I need to work with. I put these into a "quick collection" by highlighting the image and pressing "B" on the keyboard. I don't do too much precise selection at this point, as I can remove an image from the collection at any stage., so I could have two or three candidates for a shot. Once I am satisfied I have selected all the images I want I go to the "Quick Collection" ( Pressing cmd/ctrl B on the keyboard does this. In fact this command enable you to toggle between the quick collection and the unselected images ).

Now I run through the images quickly to make sure I'm happy with them. All this is done without as yet processing the RAW image which makes things faster. You can even zoom in from the grid module to enlarge the image, to make sure everything is OK .

Now those images that need processing, and only those, I drop into the Develop module. The one in Lightroom is similar to the ACR module but as you will have found out has a much better user interface and has a couple of controls I don't think ACR has.
Any retouching needed can now be done by exporting the images into Photoshop. Remember that once retouched the images is re saved within the same set of images as the original.

Don't forget the spot healing brush is good for removing the odd blemish as well as the occasional "Dust Bunnie". The localised retouching brush also is useful and can do a lot without the need to go into Photoshop

Also any edits can be undone or changed without affecting the final output, so you can make as many changes as you like without degrading the quality of the original. Plus these adjustments are saved within the database so you only have to do them once.

Now you can either output these images as TIFF or JPEG files or simply print them via the Print Module .

I then save the "Quick Collection" with the assignment name. I can retrieve this collection at any time to make further changes if required or add additional images. Keeps things tidy.

I will at some stage add keywords if necessary. The exact stage depends on how quickly the images are needed and how specific keywording needs to be

Exit Lightroom saving the updated library

You may find your workflow may be different, as each person has a individual approach, however I hope this helps in some way
 
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That sounds pretty much like my Lightroom workflow, although I didn't know about the CMD+B shortcut - thanks!
 
testbloke said:
The second factor is cost, lightroom currently on a 30% discount and I have also been playing with NIK softwares suite which I really like. The NIK software is half price for lightroom than it is for CS5.
Click to expand...

Something no one has seemed to mention is that the reason for this is that the LR version of Nik simply generates a separate tiff, whereas the CS Nik version can generate multiple layers at different settings that can be blended and is more versatile.

You make your choice and pay the money.;)
 
Chappers said:
Kevin

I don't know if this helps. I don't do weddings but I can come back from an editorial shoot with a few hundred images that need sorting and classifying. The workflow may be similar.

I import the images into Lightroom, not too different from bridge. I then batch rename them, again similar to what you can do in bridge.

Then Back up TWICE... yes I am paranoid.

Then I go to grid view and quickly go through the images deleting the obvious rubbish.
Now in grid view I start to select the images I need to work with. I put these into a "quick collection" by highlighting the image and pressing "B" on the keyboard. I don't do too much precise selection at this point, as I can remove an image from the collection at any stage., so I could have two or three candidates for a shot. Once I am satisfied I have selected all the images I want I go to the "Quick Collection" ( Pressing cmd/ctrl B on the keyboard does this. In fact this command enable you to toggle between the quick collection and the unselected images ).

Now I run through the images quickly to make sure I'm happy with them. All this is done without as yet processing the RAW image which makes things faster. You can even zoom in from the grid module to enlarge the image, to make sure everything is OK .

Now those images that need processing, and only those, I drop into the Develop module. The one in Lightroom is similar to the ACR module but as you will have found out has a much better user interface and has a couple of controls I don't think ACR has.
Any retouching needed can now be done by exporting the images into Photoshop. Remember that once retouched the images is re saved within the same set of images as the original.

Don't forget the spot healing brush is good for removing the odd blemish as well as the occasional "Dust Bunnie". The localised retouching brush also is useful and can do a lot without the need to go into Photoshop

Also any edits can be undone or changed without affecting the final output, so you can make as many changes as you like without degrading the quality of the original. Plus these adjustments are saved within the database so you only have to do them once.

Now you can either output these images as TIFF or JPEG files or simply print them via the Print Module .

I then save the "Quick Collection" with the assignment name. I can retrieve this collection at any time to make further changes if required or add additional images. Keeps things tidy.

I will at some stage add keywords if necessary. The exact stage depends on how quickly the images are needed and how specific keywording needs to be

Exit Lightroom saving the updated library

You may find your workflow may be different, as each person has a individual approach, however I hope this helps in some way
Click to expand...

Thank you for the detail, starting to see where time could be saved.
 
craftysnapper said:
Something no one has seemed to mention is that the reason for this is that the LR version of Nik simply generates a separate tiff, whereas the CS Nik version can generate multiple layers at different settings that can be blended and is more versatile.

You make your choice and pay the money.;)
Click to expand...

Again, thanks for that, as I dont have LR version i assumed (I know, i know !) that they were the same.
 
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