About Lightroom

[The Meaness]

Probably not, Bob. To me the biggest advantage of LR is batch editing. When I am editing an event, I can see the timeline very clearly of all my photos. In my mind I separate the event based on different scenes with dramatic light changes, I do one run of edits very quickly (by applying the same basic adjustments each scene), tweak, then bring selected photos into Silver Efex, Photoshop, or Viveza for more select/powerful edits.

If you want single photos managed in very selective ways, steer clear of LR. Get Silver Efex or Viveza to go with Photoshop.

 

[hteasley]

I've been using PS professionally since version 2, and have used all versions of Lightroom and Aperture.

Lightroom organizes your photo library, and makes metadata editing of your photos very easy. All edits are non-destructive, so you can go back years later and still back out of all Lightroom changes to an image (external editor changes are handled differently).

For global edits, like exposure correction or canvas rotation, Lightroom is just a lot faster than PS, and provides more global edit options, with a better UI. For local edits, or issues where you have to do any masking at all, you want to edit in PS. Lightroom also makes it easier to deal with RAW files.

The library maintenance of Lightroom is much of its appeal. PS has Bridge, which is terrible, and should not be considered to be a useful substitute.

 

[Luna]

Why compare Lightroom to Photoshop? They are two completely different concept solutions. If you don't understand the concepts that each of these brings, then stick to your current workflow because investing in these, both time and money, may not suit you well. In fact, you may walk away spent and upset for no good reason other then the fact that you didn't understand them from the beginning.

 

[photokalia]

I moved from Photoshop to Lightroom when it first came out, and now I do almost everything in Lightroom. From what I understand, Lightroom was built from the ground up with photographers in mind, and Adobe worked closely with actual photographers in designing Lightroom. The aim was to take the tools that photographers often used in Photoshop, and put them into Lightroom. At the same time, they also added a photo organisation/selection workflow and made batch processing of photos much easier in Lightroom.

Of course, you do end up losing some functions from Photoshop, e.g. the liquify tool, layers, etc, but the end result is that photographers end up with a dedicated piece of software that can do 90% of what they used to rely on Photoshop to do.

So the next question is why not just stick with Photoshop? Well, you can, and some photographers who do a lot of post-processing have good reason to. However, for majority of us who just need some levels adjustments, colour balancing and sharpening, Lightroom will do the trick faster and more efficiently than Photoshop. For one thing, the tools are easier to access as you don't need to wade through a menu system to get to them, and you don't have to remember shortcut keys or mess with layers.

And it isn't a case where you have to only use one or the other. I always start out using Lightroom, but if I need a tool from Photoshop, I will right click on the photo and opt to edit it in Photoshop. Once done, I will then go back to my Lightroom workflow, and the photo will then appear in Lightroom, with my edits from Photoshop. For example, I find that cloning out dust spots is faster in Photoshop than Lightroom.

Photoshop is good if you need to work intensively on one photo at a time, or need tools that Lightroom doesn't offer. Lightroom is better when you have a whole lot of photos shot under similar lighting conditions, and you want them processed in similar ways. It is also very good for helping you to decide which photos to keep and which to trash, and for tagging of metadata. They are different tools, and each with their own strengths and shortcomings. So there is no right or wrong, and I'd say that you should just use whatever you are more comfortable with.

 

[kgb144]

It is simple. Lightroom is used for image manipulation and Photoshop is for pixel manipulation.

Lightroom is the closest digital programme to working in a darkroom.

I have ditched PS3 and now use Lightroom 3 with Elements for any pesky pixels that need training.

ft

 

[rayfoxlee]

It is simple. Lightroom is used for image manipulation and Photoshop is for pixel manipulation.

Lightroom is the closest digital programme to working in a darkroom.

I have ditched PS3 and now use Lightroom 3 with Elements for any pesky pixels that need training.

ft

Spot on, kgb144! PS is a far more complex program, with selections, layers etc for very advanced work, but I have found that a lot of those features are largely irrelevant to me. LR handles so much of what is needed with consummate ease, IMO - except cloning, which I do think PS handles far better than LR. The other area that PS is probably better is the initial treatment of scanned B&W negs - but that is another story. Exposure, white balance, contrast, vibrancy, colour, sharpening are all handled well with easy to use tools in the right hand tray. The improvements in LR3 adds some very useful additional tools that can replicate graduated filters etc.

The best way to get a feel for LR is to take the 30 day trial, download a few unprocessed images and edit them in the develop module by working your way down the tools on the right hand side - taking them in order from top to bottom will do to start with. Make sure you have the image at 1:1 while you are editing. The beauty of LR is that the changes are non-destructive and can be easily undone. Only after the completed image is exported are the changes 'fixed' in the exported image, but this does not stop you from editing the basic file again in LR for a different look. Also, LR lets you create a cloned copy of your image and you can edit these differently and then compare them side-by-side.

Take the plunge. I doubt you would be disappointed - in fact, I reckon PS would gather dust!

Good luck

Ray

 

[damien.murphy]

Can anyone suggest a good tutorial explaining the current version of Lightroom to experienced Photoshop users?

George Jardines video tutorials at mulita.com are excellent, although you will have to decide whether you want to spend $25- $50 on tutorials. George was integrally involved at Adobe right from the start of Lightroom, and have simply found his videos the best way to understand & get the most out of lightroom. He has 2 series of tutorials, one on the Library module covering all the cataloguing functionality, and another on the Develop module covering all the editing functionality, with a free video in each series to see what he's all about before you buy.

 

[damien.murphy]

Ok, I will reveal my ignorance. Can some one explain Lightroom to me? I have PSE 7 and PS CS4 that are supplied on my work computer. Rather than just do some blind googling, I thought someone might share some brief insight as to what it does and why I might need it in addition to or instead of photoshop.

Photoshop is a graphic design program, from which photographers use a subset of the programs overall functionality, and probably have their own workflow. Lightroom is a program designed for photographers, to cover all the little tasks we go through as soon as we get our images onto a computer. This includes cataloguing, keywording, as well as the general workflow in moving our images along the path from capture to a finished, edited image or print.

I can imagine how experienced photoshop users find it hard to understand Lightroom, but just as a city centre runabout is much easier to navigate inner city streets than a Rolls Royce, so is Lightroom easier and faster to use than Photoshop for the majority of small photo tasks. It's really a question of design - photoshop was designed to give you the ultimate toolbox to extract the utmost quality from a single image, whereas Lightroom was designed to let photographers manage the hundreds of images they return from a shoot with, by handling all the associated needs of a photographer.

Photoshop is not without a role in many photographers repertoires, but I think you will find many photographers find the editing capabilities of Lightroom perfect for many of their images, while some will require the finer finesse photoshop can offer.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Thanks to everyone who answered my specific questions. It appears that Lightroom is not a good fit for me with my 10+ years developed Photoshop workflow.

1) I work with probably an average of 10 files per week. Each is special as I had done much editing to get to this point.
2) I don't use any presets or auto adjustments.
3) all my Photoshop editing is non-destructive as I do everything in layers and always save the file with layers intact.
4) I really like the ability to do local density/contrast adjustments in a separate layer then vary the opacity of that layer to adjust the impact of that specific adjustment.
5) I have a well developed file management process of my own. I have no metadata (scan film) and will never have a need to search volumes of files for photos of cats shot on Tuesdays with an omygoshigon lens at f5.6.

Now I have bought a digital camera to use for family happy snaps. I treat those files as I do film to scan, i.e. edit and immediately about 95% saving only those with very high potential. But maybe LR will find some use there. I will check out the suggested tutorial and see if I want to pay the price.

 

[jsrockit]

Lightroom is the closest digital programme to working in a darkroom.

This is why I use it...

 

[gavinlg]

Simply put -

Lightroom is an all-in-one photography-centric manipulation and library. Half the reason lightroom is so popular is it's cataloging and library feature, which is brilliant, and I would never want to store photos any other way, ever.

Photoshop is a powerful graphics program that can also be used to edit photos, but is a P.I.A in terms of ease of use and workflow.

 

[Warren T.]

I used Photoshop for 10 years and developed my own workflow (more like cobbled together), all the time waiting for a time when I would upgrade to a faster computer and for software to become more advanced. I was forced to shoot in .jpeg because my computers could not handle the file sizes and processing requirements for RAW conversion.

Finally, about 6 months ago, I had a chance to upgrade to a powerful computer, and now I can finally shoot in RAW. I decided to try Lightroom because I was interested in it as an end-to-end (input to computer, RAW conversion, manage, edit, output to printer or web) workflow solution.

I ended up starting from scratch with regard to file organization, and I adopted the LR workflow, and I couldn't be happier. I have not touched Photoshop since I adopted LR. I use Silver Efex Pro 2 as a LR plug-in, and I have started using Impact WSPP as a web presentation plug-in (it lets me create an entire web site from within LR).

LR does almost everything that I need to do with my digital photography.

--Warren

 

[Bob Michaels]

..................................
Lightroom is the closest digital programme to working in a darkroom.
...................................

Now I found just the opposite with Photoshop mirroring what I did in the darkroom and Lightroom differing substantially.

In the darkroom, I store negatives in folders based on the project. I do the same in Photoshop except they are subdirectories on my hard drive. Lightroom wants to maintain an electronic data base of everything.

In the darkroom, I selected individual negs to print. In PS I select individual files to work on. Lightroom seems to be designed to work on all the files at once.

In the darkroom, I make each adjustment be it density, global contrast, or local contrast adjustments specific to that neg. I do the same in Photoshop. LR seems to be designed to make the standard global adjustments to all the files.

It is a matter of perspective, but Lightroom to totally alien to the workflow I begin in a darkroom and carried over the Photoshop.

 

[jsrockit]

In the darkroom, I selected individual negs to print. In PS I select individual files to work on. Lightroom seems to be designed to work on all the files at once.

In the darkroom, I make each adjustment be it density, global contrast, or local contrast adjustments specific to that neg. I do the same in Photoshop. LR seems to be designed to make the standard global adjustments to all the files.

No Bob, it's not only for that. I work on individual photos all of the time in lightroom. I've never ever done a batch. I think this is where you are going wrong... believing that it is only for batch processing.

I keep two directories myself... one is on two harddrives by date. The other is a lightroom directory that accesses my other directory and does not make any destructive changes to my images.

Lightroom is dead simple. I only import the images I really want to work on (from a screen that looks like a contact sheet), then I work on them individually with all of the functions of a traditional darkroom plus more, and then I go to the print tab and easily adjust the size etc and print. I cannot imagine PS, with its focus not being on photos only, being easier than this program. I can see you being used to PS and being afraid to change. Nothing wrong with that... PS does the job as well.

 

[hteasley]

In the darkroom, I selected individual negs to print. In PS I select individual files to work on. Lightroom seems to be designed to work on all the files at once.

It's not. It can, but there's nothing about it that makes editing a single file problematic or difficult. Select a picture in your list, hit D, and you're "developing" on that single image. Hit G to go back to your gallery, and find another image you want to edit.

You can bulk edit things, if you want, but there's nothing to force you to do so.

I think my favorite editing feature is just wrapping up a lot of disparate changes to a single image and being able to apply those exact changes to other images, without having had to preplan doing so. If I have a bunch of images where I'd like to tweak white balance, exposure, noise reduction, all the same way, I can edit one, arrive at values that work well, and then just copy and paste those changes to the other files.

With PS, if you use multiple tools to make multiple changes to a file, then you have to plan ahead in order to move those changes to other files. Start recording an action, make changes to one file, arrive at what you like, then stop recording and play that action back on the other files. Or you have to save and load presets for every Levels, Hue/Sat, or other similar operation you did.

I can't plan ahead like that: I often start down a path of editing before I realize that I might want to make these changes more than once. Then I have to decide if they're complicated enough and precise enough that I want to go to the trouble of recording them for playback, or saving presets, and back my work out to start it over. And forget going back to an image and figuring out what you did the first time. Even saving layers of changes doesn't tell you what you did to make that change.

Even the active history states don't tell you what you did: they don't save operation information, they merely save pixels. A history state will say "Levels" but there's no way to find out what you did in that panel. All you can do is flip back and forth and see approximately what you did.

And if all those operations were specific and temporary (valid only for the photos you just worked on), then you have the detritus to clean up, of presets you don't want to keep around, actions you don't want to save, etc.

This is not an attempt to change your mind, if you just don't like Lightroom. I just want to make sure that there's no misperception of Lightroom's virtues or vices. It has got problems, but it also fundamentally has some capabilities that, while achievable in PS, involve huge workarounds and generally a loss of process information.

 

[venchka]

OOPS. looks like we are all ganging up on Bob. Sorry. That is not my intention. Just telling everyone how I use Lightroom.

Now I found just the opposite with Photoshop mirroring what I did in the darkroom and Lightroom differing substantially.

In the darkroom, I store negatives in folders based on the project. I do the same in Photoshop except they are subdirectories on my hard drive. Lightroom wants to maintain an electronic data base of everything.

In the darkroom, I selected individual negs to print. In PS I select individual files to work on. Lightroom seems to be designed to work on all the files at once.

In the darkroom, I make each adjustment be it density, global contrast, or local contrast adjustments specific to that neg. I do the same in Photoshop. LR seems to be designed to make the standard global adjustments to all the files.

It is a matter of perspective, but Lightroom to totally alien to the workflow I begin in a darkroom and carried over the Photoshop.

Bob,
I won't try to convert you. All I will say is that your perceptions of Lightroom are incorrect. I create my own folder structure based on date-camera-lens-film-dev-etc. for my scanned negative/positive files. I let Canon make the folders for the digital camera & tweek the naming convention to suit me.
I work on each file individually or collectively, depending on the task & shoot at hand. I have, on occasion, created Lightroom virtual copies to experiment with different editing schemes. I can back up/go forward in the edit trail to suit my purposes with any particular file. By that I mean I can, to use the old gaming ploy "save & dare", try various adjustments. If I don't like them, I just back up to where I started and try something else.
Cropping is really customizeable. I can enter my own aspect ratios (7x17, 1:3, 6cmx17cm, anything) and the crop window adjusts for me. I then just move the window to suit & presto. A perfect 1:3 (or whatever) crop. I can also rotate to square up my files at the same time.
Printing is just as personal. I save paper types with paper size, print window size, profile, etc. Select a file & open the print module. BAM! there is my image on screen ready to print.
In all cases, I can work on one or bunch of files. My choice. Lightroom, to me, is truly an electronic enlarger.

ps: I don't use nor am I proficient with Photoshop. I haven't found a need for Photoshop. I can certainly put those funds to better use for film, chemicals, paper & ink.

 

[Doug]

I'm in agreement with jsrockit's statement above. I mostly deal with images individually, though I will apply lens corrections (distortion, CAs) to a batch.

Like Bob and others, I have a long-established cataloging and file system for photos, and don't want LR messing around with it! In fact, at the outset I examined the LR library and catalog features with suspicion, and found that it can safely be ignored, so I am pleased to carry on with my own system as before, and use LR for editing photos. 🙂

 

[Bob Michaels]

Thanks guys. I am not close minded and have not given up on Lightroom permanently. I will utilize your input and give LR another try sometime when I have time to deal with learning a new program.

Do I think I will save time or improve output using LR when my basic Photoshop workflow for my normal b&w files is:

1) open scan .TIF file in Photoshop
2) immediately save as a .PSD file
3) manually adjust levels
4) manually crop to exact required aspect ratio
5) create custom S shaped contrast curve in separate layer
6) create any required local contrast adjustments in separate layer
6a) adjust opacity of local contrast adjustments layer
7) save .PSD file with all layers intact
8) flatten layers
9) adjust size for proof print
10) sharpen
11) make proof print
12) undo sharpening
13) resize for small .JPG
14) sharpen .JPG
15) save .JPG
16) close file without saving any changes from 7) forward

This normally takes 3-4 minutes per file. No problem as I average 4-8 files per week from the 3 rolls I normally shoot.

I end up with proof print and 3 files: the .TIF from the original scan, .PSD with layers unflattened (if I later want to change an adjustment) and a .JPG file, all with the same name.

So could I do this any better in LR than in PS with every step involving artistic judgement rather than application of some standard?

Right now I have 4 select negs from 3 rolls I shot last Sunday. I will scan then adjust each as above. I will spend about 15 minutes total in PS doing everything. When finished, I will have files I can confidently resize, resharpen and reprint large if I decide to include them in an exhibited series.

FWIW, all files are in C:/users/bob/mypictures/south apopka religion/ new life pentecostal/ That is all the info I will ever care about.

 

[jsrockit]

If all that usually takes 3-4 minutes per file, I would say you are not going to save any time.

 

[Warren T.]

Bob, you might be better off staying with your current workflow, given the volume of work that you do, and the speed that you're able to accomplish what you need with your current process. --Warren