CS4 - Elements - Lightroom - What's the difference?

[stoogest]

Hi all,

I'm currently using PS Elements to manage/edit my photos, but have noticed that others use programs such as PS CS3/4, Lightroom, Paintshop Pro etc...

Can someone summarise for me what the main difference is between these programs, and what would be the better long term investment (aprticularly between the three Adobe products)?

Is there something I have left off the list that I should consider (besides GIMP, as I find that to have too steep a learning curve!).

Thanks!

[ricktas]

Photoshop cs4 is the latest version of Adobe's top end image processing/editing package. In the end most photographers probably use between 10% and 20% of its features.

Lightroom is Digital Asset Management Software, it is basically a cataloguing system with a RAW processor built in. It has some great features, but is designed more for 'whole of image' editing than specific adjustments, like cloning etc. It can clone, but Photoshop does it better.

Paintshop Pro is another brand of image editing software, its not to bad for the price and you get pretty much all the features that photoshop offers.

Elements is Adobe's "consumer" version of Photoshop, some great features for the price.

If you think Gimp has a steep learning curve...give up now! Seriously, they all require you to spend some time learning them and the Gimp uses a menu system similar to paint shop pro and photoshop. Do not expect to be able to buy any of these products and be able to use them well for several months. It is a HUGE learning experience.

For someone starting out who has not done any editing before, and wants to pay $$ for some software, I would say start with the latest version of Photoshop Elements, learn it and go from there.

[stoogest]

Great. Thanks for that! I might stick with Elements for a little while then.

[Seesee]

Rick I think has summed it up well, Elements is a great program for the relatively cheap price, a fraction of the cost of CS3 or CS4. I operates very similar to CS3/4 but just has some less functions. I used Elements 5 for quite sometime and it did a whole lot more than most people will ever use.

[clcollins]

The new Lightroom 2 now has brushes and allows you to touch up particular parts of your image (pretty much the same as photoshop). Lightroom is much more user friendly than Photoshop for the non-technical person (IMO anyway).

I used to work for a pro-photog and do a lot of work in the darkroom and Lightroom makes sense to me because you can easily do similar things you would do in the darkroom.You don't have to learn about layers or anything and it has an excellent catalouging function - makes it so easy to find your pictures (as long as you are disciplined about naming when you import them). At student price Lightroom was $150 so very cheap for what it does.

I used to do all basic edits in lightroom (exposure, brightness, contracts, saturation, B&W conversions, colour) and then go to Photoshop to work on particular areas such as eyes etc. With Lightroom 2 I can now do 95% of my edits in lightroom and I only pop into photoshop for some of the tougher stuff (like stitching panorama's together). (CS4 arrived yesterday but I haven't had time to play with it yet and see if it is more user friendly).

From what I have seen on this forum PS Elements does great work, so unless you are after a better cataloguing system as well I wouldn't really think you would need to upgrade until you feel your software isn't doing everything you want to do.

If you ever do decide to upgrade your software and go to lightroom or photoshop I'd suggest purchasing one of Scott Kelby's books on the software as it runs through everything in an easy to read step by step manner.

[stoogest]

Thanks Cath/Colin. Can anyone comment on which of these is best for RAW processing/conversion? I've only just started using RAW and it seems to me that Elements does some weird things when saving to a different file type.

In particular, I edited a RAW photo in the 'Full Edit' section and then saved it as a TIFF file. But then Elements wouldn't recognise the file and it didn't show up in the left hand window (even though it was obviously in My Computer). When I double clicked on the TIFF file in My Computer it opened up in my default program (Microsoft Picture Manager I think) but it was WAY over exposed and didn't look anything like what I saved in Elements. Very strange all round...

[Seesee]

I belive Nikons own software is the bees knees for editing from Nikon images.

Not sure what you mean by "weird" things" in Elements. ?

The processing engines { for lack of a better term } in Elements are exactly the same as in the very advanced CS2, CS3 and CS4 so for basic editing it should be excellent. Certainly CS2/3/4 have more tweaks and some very very good pano stitching tools plus plus plus....but Elements should deliver the goods as good as most other programs with the right techniques.

I have CS3 extended, Lightroom, Nikon Capture NX and Elements 5, but I admit to just using CS3 now...basically I'd rather perfect { if possibe} that that play around with others as well, but that's just me.

My advice after a long rant........stick with Elements for the time being, until you find it's limits and master it, then maybe consider upgrading.

[ricktas]

you need to tell your computer to open TIF files in Elements.

Open Explorer, then up the top menu in explorer, click on Tools, folder options, select the file types tab. scroll down the list till you find the extensions (TIF and TIFF).

Click on them, then click the "change" button, find elements and set that as the default for both TIF and TIFF.

Then see how you go.

*note following these instructions is at your own risk*

[jonty]

Thanks Cath/Colin. Can anyone comment on which of these is best for RAW processing/conversion? I've only just started using RAW and it seems to me that Elements does some weird things when saving to a different file type.

I'd recommend Lightroom for RAW conversion as I find it easy to use and does a good job and if for no other reason that it's great as a catalogue/digital asset management app. It's very logical (to me :)) and has a great interface and many excellent features to make life easier (Scott Kelby's book "Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers" is highly recommended).

Having said that, you have a Nikon, and you'll probably find that you get nicer pictures "straight off the camera" with Capture NX 2 than with Lightroom, as NX 2 reads all the in-camera settings. So the processed RAW looks a lot like the JPEG, which is a nice place to start :). The downside is that it's got an awkward interface and processing lots of files can take quite some time, and of course it's not really as good at DAM as Lightroom (but it's not really designed for that). Also, Lightroom's camera profiles are pretty good now.

I would download trials of NX 2 and Lightroom and see how you go. Everyone has their own favourite and I'm sure you could get just as nice images with each of them.