Adobe Lightroom

ian_w

ian_w

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Hi

I'm puzzling over purchasing Lightroom, Photoshop or both. I realise that this may not be the precise forum to place this, but I figure that a fair few of you will be using one or both. The main question is - Do I need both?

If I'm only 'developing' Raw files for print then surely Lightroom is enough. If I'm thinking about scanning film as well do I need Photoshop or will I be able to use Lightroom for this too? What are the main functions you think important that I give up in going for Lightroom only?

Hopefully a few of you are users and can answer my questions!

Thanks

Ian
 
Lightroom handles scanned film very well, it supports 16 bits! A good workflow is to scan as 16/48 bit TIFF, then import into Lightroom telling it to convert do Digital Negative, you are going to save some space that way. The only thing I miss when working with Lightroom is dodging/burning, but I am not a Photoshop expert. But for global exposure/contrast/color adjustments, and for sharpening, cropping and spotting Lightroom is great, and pretty fast.
 
I use Lightroom and love it precisely because I am not a P/S expert. It handles most functions well though I do have a bit of trouble cropping. Probably user error.
 
I use both. Sophisticated manipulation (masks, perspective correction and so on) cannot be done in Lightroom. I find printing in Lightroom easier than printing in Photoshop, however. I find that they complement each other nicely.

Ben Marks
 
Lightroom is great. I've bought it and like it. It is the complete package for managing your photo library, making exposure adjustment and exporting images for different uses (haven't tried printing and exporting for web yet).
 
I work with both Lightroom and CS3 both are a learning curve but i can see the potential of using the two softwares in conjunction with one another- i do find Lightroom's Library much easier to use then CS3's Bridge.
 
Lightroom is a dream. Here's what I use

1) Vuescan: To scan my Tri-X negs straight in to TIFFs
2) Photoshop: To clean up dust spots, scratches, adjust levels, dodge/burn
3) Lightroom: Cataloging, picking favorites, exporting to my online gallery

I'm wondering if I should move to DNG instead of TIFFs. Any ideas?
 
Alan i work with the same film and scanner software what scanner do you use?
 
You need to understand that these are almost completely different products.

-- Lightroom is designed to help you manage large collections of raw image files. It provides a lot of tools for organizing, keywording, and selecting batches of images. It also lets you make basic adjustments to images -- changing their exposure, color balance, cropping, etc. -- so that you can edit a batch of raw files into a form you can work with or present to clients.

-- Photoshop is designed to help you make drastic adjustments (if necessary) to individual images. It provides a lot of tools for changing the individual pixels that make up an image, compositing it with other images. It doesn't have any features at all for managing a whole library of images; Adobe wants you to use Lightroom or Bridge for that.

To give a very basic example: If you shoot some headshots and later decide that they're all a bit underexposed, Lightroom gives you a simple way to apply a bit of overall correction to all of them. Photoshop doesn't do that; it would make you correct each image individually.

On the other hand, if you look at your collection of headshots and decide that #4 is the best one, except that the model's teeth need to be whiter, some blemishes need to be removed from her face, and she'd look better against a different background. Lightroom is no help at all in this scenario, because it can make only simple overall corrections to the image. Photoshop, with its selection and layering tools, will let you edit the individual pixels as much as necessary (or even paint in completely new ones) while blending and combining the image with other images if you want.

Which works better comes down to how you like to handle your images and what needs to be done to them. I can't imagine that Lightroom alone would have enough tools to clean up scans from film, removing all the tiny defects (it does have a clone tool, but it's very limited) and on the other hand Photoshop alone wouldn't be much help in looking at a whole batch of scans, trying various looks on them, and then picking the one that looks best.

I suspect that in the end (as Adobe probably realized quite well) most digital photographers are going to need both: Lightroom (or its competitor, Apple Aperture) to handle organizing and basic prepping of large groups of images, and Photoshop to handle finely-detailed retouching of individual images.
 
Alan, Lightroom's DNG saves some space compared to TIFF. But don't bother exporting DNGs directly from Vuescan (with the new save raw scan as DNG), as the image appears inverted. There's an invert image preset for Lightroom to correct this, but it's a drag as all the exposure related and curves sliders begin working backwards...

alansoon said:
Lightroom is a dream. Here's what I use

1) Vuescan: To scan my Tri-X negs straight in to TIFFs
2) Photoshop: To clean up dust spots, scratches, adjust levels, dodge/burn
3) Lightroom: Cataloging, picking favorites, exporting to my online gallery

I'm wondering if I should move to DNG instead of TIFFs. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
 
jlw said:
You need to understand that these are almost completely different products.

-- Lightroom is designed to help you manage large collections of raw image files. It provides a lot of tools for organizing, keywording, and selecting batches of images. It also lets you make basic adjustments to images -- changing their exposure, color balance, cropping, etc. -- so that you can edit a batch of raw files into a form you can work with or present to clients.

-- Photoshop is designed to help you make drastic adjustments (if necessary) to individual images. It provides a lot of tools for changing the individual pixels that make up an image, compositing it with other images. It doesn't have any features at all for managing a whole library of images; Adobe wants you to use Lightroom or Bridge for that.

To give a very basic example: If you shoot some headshots and later decide that they're all a bit underexposed, Lightroom gives you a simple way to apply a bit of overall correction to all of them. Photoshop doesn't do that; it would make you correct each image individually.

On the other hand, if you look at your collection of headshots and decide that #4 is the best one, except that the model's teeth need to be whiter, some blemishes need to be removed from her face, and she'd look better against a different background. Lightroom is no help at all in this scenario, because it can make only simple overall corrections to the image. Photoshop, with its selection and layering tools, will let you edit the individual pixels as much as necessary (or even paint in completely new ones) while blending and combining the image with other images if you want.

Which works better comes down to how you like to handle your images and what needs to be done to them. I can't imagine that Lightroom alone would have enough tools to clean up scans from film, removing all the tiny defects (it does have a clone tool, but it's very limited) and on the other hand Photoshop alone wouldn't be much help in looking at a whole batch of scans, trying various looks on them, and then picking the one that looks best.

I suspect that in the end (as Adobe probably realized quite well) most digital photographers are going to need both: Lightroom (or its competitor, Apple Aperture) to handle organizing and basic prepping of large groups of images, and Photoshop to handle finely-detailed retouching of individual images.
Click to expand...

I agree. There's no way Adobe would come out with a PS-killer or even a PSE-killer app. I've never understood Lightroom to be a replacement. It seems Adobe is gearing the product to digital photographers who shoot a large number of images of a single event and need to manage those images and apply basic adjustments globally. Seems like a wedding photographer's dream app. That said, it seems there could be some value to the dedicated or part-time film scanner. I like the non-destructive editing and the huge RAW support.

:)
 
Yep, you can then throw away the TIFF (which are BIG, even for BW scans). Even if you use Vuescan's DNG you get a modest size reduction.

alansoon said:
Fabio: So, in other words, you scan as TIFF and then get them converted into DNG in Lightroom?
Click to expand...
 
Well, that's a few more replies than I thought I'd get! Looks like I'll be getting them both:)

Thanks a lot for the information!

Ian
 
You might try just LR first. You probably need an editor for those "drastic" jobs, but LR 1.1 has a lot of basic and even intermediate capabilities, and it may be better to learn LR's workflow first. YMMV!
 
I belive that when you have PS (speaking of ps cs3) you dont need LR at all.
Since Cs3 has the new cameraRaw included you can make all adjustments you could do with LR with cameraRaw (even with jpg, tiff and dng).
The new bridge also includes all features (and more) for organisation like LR, and since bridge has a Live-DB you dont have to import new images everytime.
Exporting image gallerys to the web is a build in feature since forever in PS... so again, no need for LR

Now, i am not saying that LR is bad, ..., not at all. It just makes no sense to have PS CS3 and LR together... waste of money.
 
While we're on this subject, where does Adobe Elements fit into all this? I have a trial version. It seems like it has some major components of Photoshop, tailored for a digital photo environment. Other than lacking some of the detailed controls of Lightroom, it seems to provide many of the same photo processing functions and photo management, but with the added advantage of "one click" corrections, which I really miss in Lightroom. I find Lightroom rather tedious to use.

/T
 
if you have the money to get photoshop, then skip the lightroom. adobe bridge works quite well for managing the collection of raw and jpg files.

I don't like lightroom althrought I have one for free from my Rawshooter conversion. LR is too lite for many uses. Of course, it is much cheaper than CS3.
 
I'm using since a few weeks Lightroom, which seems ok for general use/correction. Not yet learn all, need more time! The only point where I miss PS is to make dodge/burning (as in darkroom) on a specific area of the picture. I would try PS Element 4 (for mac) but not sure it it support the 16 bit files. CS3 is excellent but too expensive and contains a lot of things that are not necessary for a pure photographic use, at least for my way to work.
robert
 
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