jack schade Loc: La Pine Oregon

CC will come with lightroom. I use them both and would recomend it.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Photoshop CC starts out with Bridge and ACR as the first two parts of the package. The two of them are like Lightroom on hyper-steroids. Anything LR does, Bridge and ACR do better. If you've used LR, Bridge and ACR are a natural transition and Bridge is far easier to work with than the LR cataloging system. I always hated it's cataloging from the very beginning. Bridge is like a super version of Windows Explorer but far more versatile with powerful other capabilities. No more moving a photo and wondering where LR put it because it vanished, trying synchronize folders to find something, etc. No more trying to get LR cataloging to work on an external drive or moving the catalog to an external drive, etc. You have one Bridge and it does it all... Period.

Then after ACR which acts like the RAW conversion and RAW editing section of LR, you can either stop and save the file, or you can open the file into Photoshop itself for lots of editing functions that LR can't do. That is called pixel-based or layer-based editing where you can clone, heal, mask, choose an area of the photo with a lasso to edit only that section, use brushes to dodge, burn, sharpen, etc. and much more that LR can't possibly do because it's not layer-based.

You can, for example, change the gamma, contrast, saturation, etc. for a specific item in a photo or an area of a photo and that edit is kept on a layer, You can change something else on another layer. Over and over, you can stack up 50 layers or more if you like with one change on each layer. When you look at your final product, you can go to any one of the layers, re-open that adjustment, edit it, and close it again. You can mask and erase a whole section of a photo and put another layer behind it that has something else that shows through the hole left by erasing. An example of that is taking the sky out of a photo and putting a new sky in with a layer behind the photo. Layers is what makes Photoshop itself far more powerful than LR besides other in-depth functions that I've never even tapped into.

I learned a lot of new Photoshop capabilities recently though as I created artwork for a band CD. A four-page booklet of photos and lots of text, a back cover with art objects and text over them, an inside tray liner of art objects and an imported art text label, and art text to put on the CD itself. Many times this required 10 to 12 layers of photos and segments of text on separate layers so they could easily be moved around, resized, stacked in a different arrangement to have text under art or art under text, and even turning text 90 degrees or 270 degrees to put on the edges of the tray liner. The project would have been absolutely impossible in LR but Photoshop can do it with ease after I learned how to make it do what needed to be done.

When you put Bridge and ACR together for LR type editing, and then add Photoshop into that mix, you've got the ultimate editing solution. I was formerly using LR with Paintshop Pro X6 until June 2014 when Photoshop CC with Lightroom became available as an Adobe package for $9.99 a month. I switched immediately and have never touched LR or Paintshop Pro again since that day. I couldn't be happier.

To go from RAW files on my memory card straight through to finished product within an Adobe family of bundled software with a couple plug-ins without leaving it (well... I run my HDR bracketed sets through Photomatix but that's all) is heavenly. Photoshop CC is my highest recommendation if you want all the power you can possibly have in photo editing.

Besides, you get LR5.x as part of the bundled deal so you'll have both anyway. I'm still not sure why LR5 is even included unless it's just to keep the product alive as it loses market share to the Photoshop CC $9.99 per month deal. My LR5 CC is just hanging there unused because I see no practical benefit of having it. It's simply redundant and less powerful.

I have seen someone on here say 90% of photographers don't need anything more than LR provides. This is an odd and, in my view, erroneous statement because more than 65% of professional photographers are known to use Photoshop. I might believe 90% of amateur photographers who have formerly used off-brand or beginner software don't need any more than LR5 has - but my aim and goal is not to be an amateur limited by editing software. Don't believe "90%" or "most" or any other generalized fictional percentage concerning LR because it's not true. Photoshop is the King of the Hill. Always has been and always will be - especially for $9.99 a month!

redrocktom Loc: Sedona

Gene, I see you have Helicon, Photomatix and PT/Gui. Are you not satisfied with PS for focus stacking, HDR and stitching?

anotherview Loc: California

This has been my understanding from my reading about LR:

"Seldom does LR provide an image that would not benefit from additional handling in a pixel-level editor."

Others compare LR to ACR (which I use heavily), and this fact explains why an image will improve more in the full Photoshop. ACR while powerful has its limitations.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

That thread you linked to makes no sense at all. None of the people writing know what they are talking about. Both Ps and Lr are easy to Save files in (Ps) and well as Export (Lr) from. I work with many files formats and convert all the time. For some reason no one knowledgeable answered it to explain it.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Good Reply marcomarks.

anotherview Loc: California

Well said and cuts through the Adobe hype about LR. Adobe never mentions LR does not do layers.

Once I began using layers, after leaving Elements, my photo-editing results in the full Photoshop improved dramatically.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

:lol:

GTinSoCal Loc: Palmdale, CA

I can't speak to percentages, save for one, 100% of the pros I know use LR. All to varying degrees. Some like myself, use it mostly for import and catalog duties (which it is MUCH better than Bridge at), some for most or all of their development, others for nearly all they do.
LR has the ACR engine, same as Bridge and the new filter in PS.
LR has never been intended to replace PS, nor Bridge for that matter, they don't do the same things.
I am basically a LR newby, even though I've been using it for nearly 2 years, I can't get out of certain habits. Which revolve around Bridge and PS.

On the outside programs, the only one I've used more than once, to date, is Deep Sky Stacker. I've found that I can do everything else to my satisfaction inside PS.

GT

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

In terms of actual processing, everything available in LR is a small subset of PS, except for batch processing.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I'm not sure I follow your logic. Any image from LR will benefit from being put in Photoshop. And an image from ACR benefits from being put in Photoshop. So it doesn't matter if ACR is more powerful than LR for this discussion because they both have the same limitation - they're not pixel-based and don't have layering.

Actually one could say that any image from ANY other brand of RAW converter type utility software also benefits from being put through Photoshop.

My choice to use Bridge and ACR was mostly because I don't enjoy LR's cataloging fiasco and I'd rather use the Bridge type file control scheme that doesn't force catalogs on me. It just so happened that I ended up with the extra power of ACR that I've tapped into somewhat but haven't really delved into in depth. So the change over was win-win with no regrets.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Thanks.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I literally live in Bridge/ACR/Photoshop these days. I now really enjoy editing instead of hating the experience of fighting my software packages to get a project done with quality that was not as good as I wanted to achieve.

Now there are times when I end up with 10 to 12 layers to solve problems with a single photo or just to enhance it but it doesn't take long to achieve my goal. I do a lot of real estate in HDR and I can choose just the ceiling to work on it, or choose just the windows that are all the way across one wall and work with them. Or invert that selection and work with the room while the windows remain the same. I can heal a long scratch in the paint on a wall or cracks in the driveway out front, heal nicks in the furniture, take reflections off of a counter top, put in a new blue sky to replace a gray cloudy one, and on and on.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

In contrast to your LR experiences, I despised the complicated cataloging of LR. I had to fight it every day for two years before I switched to Photoshop and Bridge. I simply don't want to "import" and "export" anything. I want to look at what's on my SD card, highlight the ones to copy, and drag them into a hard drive folder (or several independent ones) I create(d) before I drag and drop. Simple and sweet.

If I want a certain photo moved from one HD folder to another, I want to grab and drag it to its destination with the movement showing up immediately. If I want to copy a folder with a ton of sub folders inside from internal hard drive to external hard drive as a backup, I want to highlight it and drag it on one page on one file tree and it happens.

I certainly don't want to waste my time syncronizing folders so a cataloging system can track import and export moves I made on the same drive or across two drives. I want simple and sweet - instant gratification - yet the ability to add keywords and such if I want to use powerful database functions - which can be done at a later time.

Just look at all the archived posts on UHH saying, "Help! I lost all my photos" or "My photos vanished" or "LR doesn't show all the photos I just downloaded onto my external drive" or "LR has my photo dimmed out and I know it's there but I can't access it" or "I deleted photos through LR but they're still on my hard drive" or "OMG! I deleted photos from my catalog and it deleted them from my hard drive and they're gone!" and hundreds of other photo file location problems that absolutely terrorize users - every single one of them relates to the LR cataloging system.

Is there even a single such comment about Bridge? Not one.

Can this be blamed on users not studying LR's cataloging and understanding it fully to draw the most power out of it? Yes. But since when should a cataloging system require intense studying and maybe even reading a book to just place your photos safely where you can find them? It will be a cold day in hell before I'm forced into reading tutorials and books to learn how to drag and drop a photo in LR when I can instantly do so in Bridge.

Bridge is a "Super Duty F-450 Diesel 4X4 Quad-Cab with 27" Mudder tires" powerful version of Windows Explorer on hyper-steroids for maximum flexibility, yet it's still just as easy to drive as a Kio Rio. LR cataloging achieves nothing that normal people need over and above Bridge - and is a complex mess to work with.

I want easy access to powerful capabilities, not something that grabs my photos away from me and insists on "importing" them into folders that are already named with the date and year then I have to read 10 pages to understand how to have them exported into folders named what I want them named. And then hope and pray the photos actually went there and the cataloging didn't just set up an internal arrow to point from their original folder it created without my consent into the one I actually wanted. I don't want to have to go to Windows Explorer to move things around and then go back to LR and have it synchronize folders to find out what I did. The whole thing is pure stupidity, drags down proficiency of the user, and is unnecessary complexity. I edit photos in bulk daily and I don't want my time wasted in a cataloging nightmare.

Also in contrast to your experiences, I don't know of one professional photographer in my region who actually makes a living in photography and uses LR. The ones I know consider LR to be a play toy like Elements and they wouldn't waste the space to have it on their computer.

While I don't consider it a play toy, and the editing portion is very similar to ACR, I am glad to be away from LR cataloging forever.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

Hear! Hear!

My feelings exactly. And There are plenty of pros who want nothing to do with LR.