Ted Liette Loc: Greenville, Ohio

I have never owned Photoshop or Lightroom and I would like to buy a program but I don't know which to choose. Could I have some feedback? Thanks!

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

Consider Corel's Paint Shop Pro, Current version is x6.
Will accept MOST plug-ins for PhotoShop and will do most all of the same things.

GWR100 Loc: England

Both are excellent, but its horses for courses. Lightroom is brilliant for raw conversion and has really good correction and improvement facilities, Photoshop and PS elements is far more creative. I use both Lightroom and Elements 9 but if I had to choose one it would be photoshop elements.

Geoff

Db7423 Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Start with Lightroom it will do 95- 100% of everything you want to do. Add Elements later if you want or need it for something LR doesn't do.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I second that suggestion.

Annie_Girl Loc: It's none of your business

for a hobbyiest I would look at PS Elements, then lightroom. CS6 is overkill.

dibsdone

Start with Lightroom. Its organization set up and developing tools allow it to be what you use soley for 85% of photographs. It is a lot cheaper too.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Ted, all costs aside. To me, it would come down to only ONE thing. Do you NEED layers.
Layers is the ability to change the color of a sky. Or say remove a fire hydrant.
Or do HDR. Removing anything or putting something in is PS.
LR will do none of those. LR is strictly for small tweaks for enhancing a shot, only.
Ted, if you only need LR, and if you shoot with Canon, have you looked at the free DPP program that came free with your camera?
Good luck.sS

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

:thumbup:

Atomicmechanic Loc: Corinth New York

I guess I'm just too old to understand why everyone feels a need to manipulate their pictures after they have taken them. Let's go old school, and play with the manual setting, aperture and shutter priority. Nowadays with the advent of digital photography one doesn't have to wait for days to see their results, it's instantaneous. Compose your shot, take your picture, and then try to change it using the camera settings. Patience will pay off, and you will develop a better understanding of photography and your pictures will reflect it also. There is a reason the camera manufacturers put those knobs or dials on a camera, it's called creativity. Try that first, and if your still not happy, then manipulate your pictures on a computer. Good luck, good learning, and great pictures.

phlash46 Loc: Westchester County, New York

another second!

Crwiwy Loc: Devon UK

Lightroom is the one to go for. It will help organize and sort your pictures as well as general corrections. I think you can get a 30 day free trial of it.

Photoshop is total overkill and only really useful for professionals who spend hours on a picture. PS Elements will do all you will need and much more - but there are many other programs for free that you could try and you may find are all you need.

There are older verions of Jasc Paintshop Pro for free - I recently saw PSP 9 (apparently the favourite) free on the Internet.

To really work on a budget look at the Open Source free software 'The Gimp'. It does have a steep learning curve but there are hundreds of free tutorials on it on Youtube as well as tutorials from the Gimp people. It is reputed to do practically everything that Photoshop will do - but for free. :thumbup:

catinacabin Loc: central Minnesota

I started out with Lightroom, then bought Elements about a year later. I wished, at the time, I had bought Elements first because Lightroom was difficult for me to learn. I'm still learning. Elements has more 'fun' photo manipulation projects. The two programs do different things.

cthahn

They are both different. Learn and understand each of them and you can then choose.

Bugfan Loc: Toronto, Canada

Hear Hear!! I shot Kodachrome slides for thirty years so the only post processing I had to do, in fact was able to do, was to arrange the slides in the desired order in a projector tray and to throw out the marginal ones. In that kind of a world you quickly learn how to get the effects you're looking for at the instant of exposure.

Today with digital it's far too easy to just press the shutter without thinking and if it looks like the image has been captured you can always spend hours to fix it after the fact. I think that's counterproductive and a waste of time. It is a lot better to learn how to get it right in the first place.

To answer the question, Photoshop is mostly for those who have to do a lot of editing and also for those who need creative tools to transform images in creative ways.

Lightroom is for those who simply need to tweak an exposure or a bit of colour balance, that kind of thing. Lightroom is also for organizing and finding your images as your collection grows and it has the capability to do batch edits on many images at the same time, something which Photoshop can't do.

Photoshop Elements is similar to Photoshop but not as richly functional. However Photoshop Elements is something you can put on your PC and own, whereas these days with Photoshop you can only rent it and when you stop paying the monthly fee it stops working. So unless you need highly sophisticated editing capabilities, Photoshop Elements is a very good editor.

Which you choose depends on what you're typically doing. I started years ago with Photoshop Elements and it served me very well for a very long time. It also has a cataloguing function like Lightroom so that gave me experience in how to deal with that too. Later I migrated to Lightroom and Photoshop though in all honesty, I suspect I could probably do well with Photoshop Elements even today.

It might be a good idea to start with Photoshop Elements and migrate from there if you need to.