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

Jim, There is much more to PS than layering a masking. If you do any facial retouching, having the ability to do frequency separation for skin color irregularities, non-destructive dodge and burn for small blemishes, the liquify tool for everything that it does, mid-level contrast adjustments using two passes with the unsharp mask tool, content aware fillmove/scale, smart objects and stack modes, local perspective control, image restoration and the many tools that come into play there, channels, color modes (RGB, Lab and CMYK), Channel Blending for black and white conversion, HDR Pro, focus stacking and panorama stitching - the list is endless for what you can use PS for.

The corrections in LR are meant to replace the camera settings with some control over where they are applied with the radial, linear and brush based local adjustment tools. But PS is far more precise at selecting and making those adjustments, and the entire battery of filters and tools can be used on those selections.

Bottom line, PS is a "complete" product - Bridge/ACR/PS if you are ok with a file browser type of organization. LR is a catalog based application with the ACR engine in it for image adjustments, but under no circumstances should you ever consider an image as "finished" straight out of LR - anymore than you would consider it finished straight out of ACR. As Don indicated, the parametric editor is good for 80%-90% of what has to be done to an image, but to make it perfect, you still need a pass through a pixel editor. I use LR to generate excellent proof quality images, but never to hand to a client as a finished product.

mrjcall Loc: Woodfin, NC

Try it without layers and see if you can reverse it.... :roll:

mrjcall Loc: Woodfin, NC

Couldn't agree more Gene, but the conversation started off simply about 'typical' photo editing such as is available in LR. Fully aware of PS capabilities, especially after spending the last 4 days glued to Creative Live annual PS webinars.
:thumbup: I'm an absolute newbie when it comes to it's use, but have had certain aspects of it's features banged into my head in a cautionary manner, one of which is the photo editing available in PS. It is destructive unless used with layers.

By far the most used tools in PS by most photographers are the selection tools and layering/masking. Many, many other capabilities available of course, but almost all the instructors agree that initial editing in LR is the most efficient process, then, after all available corrections in LR are made, on to PS if necessary for the 'pixel level' corrections.

I know just enough to be somewhat dangerous right now, but with practice, I'll get there. PS is an exciting addition to the tool belt for anyone, including myself, eh? 8-)

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

I guess there is always next year Gene ;)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Adobe will make my decision for me. I have LR 5, and if they let LR 4 owners update, then I'll wait till LR 7 comes out.

Of course, I'm not even sure if Adobe has a lower price for updating LR. I've accumulated so much instructional material for LR 6 that it would take me at least a year to go through all of it.

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

You might want to look at OnOne Perfect Photo Suite - it is FAST - at doing many of the things that are traditionally done in Photoshop - like layering and masking. The videos on their site are pretty convincing. I use it three ways - as a set of plugins to Lightroom, as a set of plugins to Photoshop, or as a stand-alone package (it reads raw files directly).

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

When you decide to continue your editing of a photo in Photoshop (from Lightroom) one of your options is to create a copy of the Lightroom edited photo for Photoshop to edit. Lightroom automatically does this and adds the additional photo to the Lightroom index bar at the bottom of your screen (with it's originals) and this is the ONLY image that PS is editing. ACR never comes up, unless you choose it to. I have been playing in PS trying to add it to my skill set, so, maybe I am doing something wrong by not getting ACR and doing all of my preprocessing in LR. But, all I am trying to do is remove distracting elements out of backgrounds in shots that, otherwise would be perfectly good portraits.

brazenhusy Loc: Longmont, Colorado

Is there a good reason not to use free Picasa for image organization for Elements??

Jerry Ward Loc: MO, Ozarks

:thumbup:

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

Well Brazen, there are good reasons for using Lightroom. Just another way to look at it. It's "bare-boned" and "basic" - and it may be all you need.

This may help:

http://mashable.com/2012/06/21/photo-organization-tools/

MartyM Loc: Monroe, NC

I agree it is the best deal around at $9.99/month. HOWEVER, I've been watching Creative Live this week and they offer a discount of $8.49/month for a year, then it will convert to the normal rate. Adobe actually canceled my old plan, which I still have 4 months until renewal. They DID NOT charge early termination fee and I signed up for another year at the discounted price. I know it's only a savings of $18.00 over the year, but it does show that Adobe ain't the buggie man as so many fear.

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

Good to hear -

It's mostly those who have not tried CC that complain the loudest. I have yet to hear of a single person that has tried it that doesn't like it and went back to CS6 or some other program.

TheDman Loc: USA

There's nothing to reverse, as Photoshop can't even open a raw file.

Bozsik Loc: Orangevale, California

It appears that the new LR6 will only be offered in the cloud. Too bad. I think LR is a fairly decent program. I'll continue using 5 until it doesn't work with any new upgrades in equipment then dump it for ACDSEE.

It is a equal tradeoff, but I won't have to pay every month to rent. I am disappointed Adobe couldn't offer both, but it is their company...their decision.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Photoshop opens raw files using Adobe Camera Raw, which will then convert the raw into an editable image that Photoshop can edit and save as...

Yep, been opening Nikon NEF raw files in Photoshop and/or Lightroom for a long time now.