Lightroom vs. Photoshop

[John Rountree]

I am looking to update my digital photo tools. What I am wondering is: can Lightroom take the place of Photoshop? I use my computer and printer to try and make my images look like something I could achieve in a wet darkroom. I am not at all interested in putting someone's head on another body or any of he usual Photoshop "tricks." I know they were made to be used together, but I think Photoshop is just way too bloated. I shoot probably 99% in black and white, scan with a Nikon Coolscan V and print with a Canon 9500 printer. Can I just use Lightroom? What will I be missing if I don't get Photoshop? Thanks for your help.

[martin s]

I luckily have access to both, for film photography Lightroom suffices I'd say. Especially if you consider pp evil. You can remove dust and correct most issues, the only thing I use Ps for are excessive scratches where a tablet comes in handy.

martin

[wlewisiii]

How about Photoshop Elements? Sufficent to my needs without anywhere near the bloat. I use it with iphoto to manage my film photography.

William

[mabelsound]

I'm with Martin, the only thing I use PS for is major scratches that I have to clone stamp out. For dust, LR2 is great.

This picture was a MESS before PS, though (I have no clue where the scratches came from, because no other frames had them), and there is no way Lightroom could have saved it:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3553/3671930452_37dba9bbda.jpg?v=0

[alien8]

Not to criticize, but your image looks underexposed. I find that my underexposed frames show way more dust and scratches when scanned than others. Maybe the other frames on the roll had more density?

[Tuolumne]

Duh, if this is all you are using your PP tools for, just use Picasa. Much easier and quite good. Also handles many raw formats.

/T

[mabelsound]

Not to criticize, but your image looks underexposed. I find that my underexposed frames show way more dust and scratches when scanned than others. Maybe the other frames on the roll had more density?

Yeah, it was definitely underexposed. That was part of the problem.

Tuolumne, don't worry, you wouldn't believe the deal I get on Adobe stuff from my college. LR, for instance, is $34. I expect I will use PS more over time, too.

[Tuolumne]

It's not the price of the alternatives, it's the pain in the a** to use them.

/T

[mabelsound]

So the healing and cloning is as good on Picasa as on Photoshop? Picasa has always annoyed me because of its googliness...it feels like it's taking over my computer. Can you just use it as an editor, and prevent it from cataloging your photos?

[tom.w.bn]

So the healing and cloning is as good on Picasa as on Photoshop? Picasa has always annoyed me because of its googliness...it feels like it's taking over my computer. Can you just use it as an editor, and prevent it from cataloging your photos?

Of course not. Look where it comes from.

[peripatetic]

Lightroom is good for everything you would do in the darkroom and way more besides.

From v2 onwards you can do localised corrections and that means that it's all many photographers will ever need.

Its organisational capabilities are unbelievably powerful too.

PS is necessary if you want to do heavy manipulation and take your photos beyond "straight" manipulation and turn it into digital art.

[mabelsound]

Lightroom is good for everything you would do in the darkroom and way more besides.

From v2 onwards you can do localised corrections and that means that it's all many photographers will ever need.

Its organisational capabilities are unbelievably powerful too.

PS is necessary if you want to do heavy manipulation and take your photos beyond "straight" manipulation and turn it into digital art.

Well, the one thing you cannot fix in LR is scratches, unless you use a brush of a diameter equal to the length of the scratch, which always blots out half your picture. Nothing on LR can beat painting out scratches with the healing tool set to proximity match!

If I didn't scan film, I would probably never use PS.

[sojournerphoto]

I use both - if your negs are clean LR is often enough, but the local corrections are slow slow slow. sometimes I just use PS instaad and I could easily live with Bridge PS for film. If you like them, then you can probably get more plugins for PS, e.g. Neat image or Silver efex etc

But, LR is enough formost things (you can do scratches with a series of dust spot corrections on heal - slow, but you can make it work. PS is much easier for this. So much that even if I just want to use LR I will set up the image adjustments then edit the original in PS to remove the dust an scratches.

Mike

[Tuolumne]

So the healing and cloning is as good on Picasa as on Photoshop? Picasa has always annoyed me because of its googliness...it feels like it's taking over my computer. Can you just use it as an editor, and prevent it from cataloging your photos?

Why would you want to? You can just ignore the cataloging if you want. It doesn't do anything outside of Picasa. But if you have over 200,000 photos, how do you cataloge them?

/T

[mabelsound]

Why would you want to? You can just ignore the cataloging if you want. It doesn't do anything outside of Picasa. But if you have over 200,000 photos, how do you cataloge them?

/T

Lightroom! i really like the LR system, it feels pretty much perfect to me.

[Tuolumne]

Lightroom! i really like the LR system, it feels pretty much perfect to me.

Lightroom? I always found its cataloging to be opaque. Oh well, chacun a son gout!

/T

[wgerrard]

Can you just use it as an editor, and prevent it from cataloging your photos?

Pretty sure you can point Picasso at folders of your choice.

[willie_901]

If you use layers (especially masks) extensively, then sticking with PS is best. If you know PS like the back of your hand, then PS is probably best.

Otherwise, LR is the way to go. There are plug-ins for LR to do barrel/pin cushion lens corrections (PTLens). You can even do HDR using Photomatix and Enfuse.

[Tuolumne]

Pretty sure you can point Picasso at folders of your choice.

That's right, I forgot. You can limit it to one folder to index.

/T

[Bob Michaels]

But if you have over 200,000 photos, how do you cataloge them?

If anyone actually has 200,000 photos worth cataloging, I would have to believe they were the greatest photographer of all times. Or, maybe they just hit the "0" key a few times too many.

[peterm1]

I think it depends on your philosophy of photography and how this relates to post processing. Some people just do "the basics" - tone, color, noise reduction and sharpening and thats about it! Some even regard any more extensive editing as a kind of "cheating." I do not. I more extensively post process most photos to get them just how I want them and this can require the full gamut of PS tools. But thats my choice and for it I need PS or a equivalent software.

If you pretty much only do the basics - then Lightroom is probably OK for you. It does these basic photo editing things very well I can say having tried it. For example the 'healing" tool is great - better than any I have tried. (Just one that comes to mind as I write.)

But you are right in the sense that PS is kinda "bloated" if you want to call it that. Its very powerful but with power comes complexity and that means its not right for a lot of people - especially if you are of the sort who just does the basic post processing.

In fact I generally prefer to use Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 which is the Corel equivalent of Adobe PS. Its about as cheap as Photoshop Elements (the cut down version of PS) but with most of the power of the full PS. AND - it is somewhat easier to use as it has an easy to use interface with lots of built in wizrds etc. If having tried it you find Lightroom is not for you then you may wish to try PSPPx2. The only disadvantage I have found is that most of the resources (tutorials and downloads) on the internet are for PS not this product so that can be a bit frustrating at times.

What are you missing? The big "two" in PS and equivalent software are layers and selections. Layers allow you to make edits each on a separate "copy/layer " created from the original and this creates wonderful flexibility in how you work. Too complex to explain now, but trust me. Its good when you get the hang of it. Its a bit tough to get the hang of though. The other big loss relates to the powerful selection tools that allow you to apply edits selectively to different parts of the image or to cut bits out and drop new bits in. Whether this matters to you or not depends on the type of post processing you do.

Finally perhaps I should also mention that there are scores if not hundreds of free and payware plugins for PS (most of which work with PSPPx2 as well) but not for Lightroom. There are how ever quite a few Ligthroom "presets" which are saved settings of all of the LR tools so that they produce various special effects with the click of a button. In this repsect they are a little like PS "actions."

On the whole if you feel PS is too much for you and especially if its not your ambition to get into heavy editing of photos then I would say stick with LR.

My idea of heaven though would be to use LR for the basic photo fixes (color tone etc) and for conversion from RAW format, then change to PS of PSPPx2 for any fancy stuff afterwards.

[craygc]

Im 100% scanned film. I use both LR and PS. For me, all post processing is done in PS as LR doesn't even start to give me the control I need. LR is primarily used as a cataloging system that replaced iViewMediaPro

[Tuolumne]

If anyone actually has 200,000 photos worth cataloging, I would have to believe they were the greatest photographer of all times. Or, maybe they just hit the "0" key a few times too many.

Insightful, Bob. Especially since you haven't seen them.

/T

[Larky]

Going back to the thread's initial question, LR and PS are different tools. LR is really a cataloguing tool with the ability to do picture wide alterations, and limited local fixes. Photoshop is the industry standard digital painting and manipulation tool for still images. If you want to do a good amount of touch up, Photoshop is the way to go. If you want a good place to archive your work, use Lightroom. If you can, get both (enrol on a night course and get it at a students rate ;) ) If you ever need and Photoshop help, feel free to PM me. :)

[arturo]

Hello.

I have lightroom and photoshop and I use them for different things.

Lightroom is IMHO much better targeted to digital workflow. I use it for digital pictures shoot with a dSRL. With digital you tend to shoot a lot and then you need the catalog, to select the best, delete, flag, order etc. Next the LR editor works best if you shoot in RAW format. The editor also allows to crop and in LR version 2 you also can do l¡mited selective editing e.g. scratches. The workflow in LR also fits in how do you treat pictures from a dSRL.

I use photoshop for scanned film pictures. Photoshop is far more powerful and flexible to correct scratches, remove dust, add sharpness, etc. It also has layers, which LR has not. And plugins. It also necessary for some processing, e.g. I shoot panoramic pictures and I must sticht individual scans together, LR would not do it.

I believe this is the best use of LR and PS. To some extent both programmes are interchangeable: nothing prevents you from importing scanned images in LR and then change levels there and fix scratches, etc. but you have no layers nor filters nor plugins nor sharpness control comparable to PS, which is pretty limiting. Coversely, you can catalog and process RAW files in photoshop too (more precisely in Bridge, which is a tool integrated in photoshop and which is a sort of little LR, but it is more suitable for retouching pictures one by one than for a workflow of hundreds or thousands of pictures).

The price of both products is different. From your problem description I would get photoshop.

Regards,

Arturo

[kuzano]

I truly dislike softwares that take over my organization. I know how to organize files and folders in my system without the help of any adjunct (and ineffective) software. Elements is all I need, since I primarily use minimal Post Processing.

[AgentX]

I really, really think Lightroom is a superior interface for those of us who aren't graphic designers. After 3 minutes with PS3 and the healing brush, however, I believe that those of us who are shooting film shouldn't be without the healing brush, clone tool, or patch tool. Dust and scratches...easy. Lightroom does dust spotting decently, but this is just fantastic.

If the healing brush came as a plug-in for Lightroom instead of requiring a separate program, I'd be ecstatic.

[MaxElmar]

They are very different animals. One is a workflow system with some editing capability, the other is industrial grade professional editing software with some workflow capability (via Bridge - and Lightroom, I guess).

I've tried to make friends with both Aperture and Lightroom, but I find I'm happier with PS and Bridge. Professionally - PS is a must in my gig so I'm sticking with it.

[Mephiloco]

If you're just doing post processing Lightroom is recommended. I never liked bridge because it pretty much does nothing useful for me. Aperture is too bloated (and overpriced) for me, and Capture One didn't seem to afford me any results Lightroom couldn't.

If you have to actually create things, or do some severe 'fixing', photoshop is the only solution. Here's a fix I started on a few weeks back and never got around to finishing. About 15 minutes of work in Photoshop

Before:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2612/3768482648_2d08d96792.jpg
After:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3259/3767683411_e5bace0d8d.jpg


I stopped working on it as I didn't think I would ever use the photo for anything, and any more time I spent would be wasted.

The following was also similarly salvaged. I didn't spend any more time on it because I don't like the framing so much (the cement post blocking the bike in the middle, and the people on the left). I do think that the negative being put through hell made the picture look better than it would've had it been pristine.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2428/3767695207_f6c447a077.jpg

[Benjamin Marks]

Peter M and Craig hit the nail on the head. I use both, but for different things. I find batch processing for things like color balance, exposure and vignetting correction, to say nothing of file format conversion much more efficient in LR, as those actions most often apply to a whole batch of pix at once (e.g. my brother's wedding pix which were under 4 totally different lighting schemes, taken with three different digi-cams plus scanned b&w film). For individual images though, and particularly difficult image repair, PS or equivalent is a must. Ditto plug ins - b&w conversion of Alien Skin2 is much better for my purposes in PS than the "convert to grayscale" function in LR. Ditto layers, panoramic stitching and so on. I don't particularly like how LR organizes 10,000 files or the lack of flexibility there, but for winnowing down 1,700 wedding pix within a particular project to a more manageable number or to categorize between those worth printing and those that are going on a CD, it is great. OTOH, I like that Bridge "sees" across so many RAW formats -- it certainly makes my life easier.

Ben Marks

Edit: I tend to use LR for one project at a time and PS as my swiss army knife for image editing.