jodo4138 Loc: Long Island NY

Which program do I need Photoshop Lightroom 5 or Photoshop elements 12 or both and maybe a brief reason why. Thanks John

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

I use Lightroom for 95% of what I need to do. For HDR merging, I use Photomatix alongside of LR. I have Elements, but rarely need it. LR is not only a good program for most post processing, it is very strong at organizing your photos. If you add keywords to your photos as you import them, you can search for any picture very easily. I'd say look at some of the many youtube video tutorials or at adobe.com and some of their video lessons. You'll see the power of it in no time. If I could only have one program, LR woud be it. You can subscribe for $9.99 a month and get Lightroom and the full blast Photoshop from Adobe if you want to try it out for a while before committing. You may like the subscription model and stick with it for $99 a year. Here's a link to the Adobe plans: http://creative.adobe.com/plans

MtnMan Loc: ID

If you are starting out, and budget isn't your prime consideration but matters, this is the way I would recommend also. You should then start with Lightroom. Photoshop is much more challenging to learn.

If budget is the prime consideration than buy Photoshop Elements. If you are patient you can find it for $49 from time to time. It is actually three programs that does nearly everything the above two do. Later on it will be easy to upgrade if you want because what you learn with it will apply to Photoshop and Lightroom. It is a Lightroom/Photoshop "light"...but very heavy in features. Thus I also recommend the book on it by Kelby and Kloskowski.

Racmanaz Loc: Sunny Tucson!

Not sure what you "need", but you may try the free program Lightzone

http://lightzoneproject.org/

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Both - they do different things in different ways. One is a parametric editor the other is a pixel-level editor. PSE has a limited raw converter, and can do some of the things that LR can do, but LR is the complete set of tools. But edits during raw conversion are global in nature, and difficult to apply to small sections of an image. This is where a pixel editor, using layers and masking, does an exceptional job. There are many other differences and you can find these in the many articles on the internet.

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

Costco. will sell the new version of elements highly discounted when it comes out. I got Lightroom discounted around black Friday.

jodo4138 Loc: Long Island NY

Thanks so much for your insights.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Dojo, I have PSE 12 and love the program.
I also gave LR 5 a try when it first came out, and didn't like it.
But that has nothing to do with the programs, but more with me and how I do things.

If you are considering PSE, may I suggest you wait about another month before buying: Traditionally the new version of PSE has been released in September (the last four versions were released on the third Tuesday in September).
And equally traditionally: Costco and a few other companies will have the new version on sale for around $49 not very long after it has been released.

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

I have LR4 and more recently purchased Elements 12 with Premiere Elements. LR is excellent, but took me a good while to learn to use. I watched a LOT of tutorials and now have purchased the book by Scott Kelby that others have mentioned. Actually, I purchased the one for Elements 12 and the one for LR4. Though I know how to use LR pretty well, I know there are a lot of things I'm not taking advantage of or could do much better.

I've used Elements just a little so far, but a couple things it does that LR does not is layers and stitching several images together. There is no "cut and paste" capabilities in LR, but I've never had to do that anyway. I can't put labels in LR, but can in Elements.

I purchased Premiere Elements with Elements so that I could do slide shows of my pics. I'm just learning a little on that too, but hopefully, it was a wise choice.

I would like to know what others use for doing slideshows with music and full control of when and how long pictures are shown as well as music control.

I was able to purchase LR as well as Elements (and Premiere) at a student/teacher rate since I work with a school system among other things.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I have Premiere, have used it mostly for video editing.
But for the video of our son's wedding (in Jamaica), I started the video with some slides of their growing-up years. I think I let each slide on for about 3 or 4 seconds, then the actual video of the wedding. It worked well together.
I even managed to have an album cover as the opening of the video, then open the cover and show the slides in the middle of the next page. It was a fun project, although timeconsuming.

MtnMan Loc: ID

I was going to mention that I don't think you need Premiere for slide shows. My 11 did them fine.

The Slide show in Elements is better than the one in Lightroom because it allows multiple songs. At least as far as I have found the Lightroom one restricts you to one sound track. Thus if you want more than one song you have to make up the multi song track outside the slideshow.

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

I have a Mac. LR won't do slideshows and don't think Elements will either.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

Elements under Windows will very definitely "do" a slideshow, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgv_2QEmZsE

While there are differences between Win and Mac versions of PSE, I would suggest that PSE will do a slideshow on a Mac as well.

I don't use LR, but it seems that you can create a slideshow in LR as well:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-lightroom-5/creating-a-slideshow-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-5/

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

If you have nothing, shoot casually and are just starting out... definitely get Elements. It is the "pixel level" editor of the two and is more comprehensive than Lightroom.

LR is a high volume cataloging/keywording, organizational tool with a limited set of mostly global image editing tools, and batch RAW processing capabilities. It's designed primarily with the pro in mind, who shoots a large number of images and needs to make proofs of those images in a hurry, as well as maintain a searchable database of images.

Elements has some of the cataloging and organizing capabilities, as well as more extensive image finishing tools. It is not designed for high volume, but for ease of use.

Photoshop is a pixel level, intensive image editing and finishing software... absolutely loaded with tools for images optimization and manipulation.

Photoshop complements Lightroom. Neither is really "complete" without the other, in the pro's toolkit.

Elements is more of a stand alone "lite" program with quite a bit of support for beginners. So I'd recommend it for anyone new to digital imaging.

The main difference is volume of images... If you shoot a couple hundred a month and just process a few here and there to make a print or post online, Elements will be fine. If you shoot thousands of images in a day and need to have proofs posted online 2 or 3 days afterward, better get Lightroom.

Put any money saved into proper calibration for your monitor and you'll be much happier and more productive (saving a lot of $ for ink and paper, if you do a lot of printing).

Note: Yes, both LR and Elements can do slideshows.

manofhg Loc: Knoxville, TN

I think most would say LR is the better editor of the two.