bobscho Loc: On The Delaware River

I'm a low level amateur who has been using PSP X6 for PP. Recently received a free copy of LR5 with a purchase of a refurbished D3200 for my granddaughter. I use D90 and do not use raw. Any advantages to use LR over PSP X6?

Thanks......Bob

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

You could actually use both to advantage. With LR you can use ACR to edit jpgs and tiffs, (not Corel files) and get the benefit of the LR management tools whilst connecting to PSPX6 seamlessly to do the editing that Corel excels at.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

Lightroom's biggest strength is the database functions that let you organize your photos and use keywords to find them. The post processing is good and I spend 95% of my time in Lightroom and 5% in Photoshop for more exotic fixes. If PSP is working for your needs, I see no reason to move. If you do move to LR, you'll find there's lots of help here and tutorials at Adobe.com and all over youtube to help you with whatever you're trying to do. Go to B&H Photo's website and look at the Tim Grey tuturial on getting organized with LR, it might help you decide.

Newsbob Loc: SF Bay Area

Bob. You should give RAW a try. You'll be amazed how much you can do with it in Lightroom. It takes practically no effort. Just open a RAW image and play around with the sliders. The one I find most useful is one that brightens up areas that are dark because of shadows. It only brightens shadow-y areas. It's called, appropriately enough "shadows". Once you have played with it, you can see how easy the other sliders function. And because LR is non-destructive, you cannot damage your original image. Once you are happy with your result, export to JPG, and you are done. Until you go back to LR, and either resume with that same photo, or start again from scratch. Believe me, you won't be wasting your time.

jaygreen55 Loc: Westport CT

I use both lightroom and Corel PSP X6. I use lightroom to download all my photos as it is a superior image organizer. I shoot everything in raw so I make all my raw adjustments in LR
and then export a TIFF for further work in PSP if needed.

It's not for me to tell you how to shoot but since you already have LR5 you should at least experiment with shooting in raw and working on them in LR. It's amazing how much highlight and shadow detail you can recover if your image is not perfectly exposed and you can fine tune your color balance as well. It also gives you the ability to decide what picture style to use (Portrait, Landscape, Vivid etc.) after the fact. All this is done in a non destructive manner and all your original picture info is retained. Why let your camera decide what your image should look like when you can easily do it yourself. You can always shoot NEF + Fine JPEG and choose which raws you want to work on. It takes more memory but high capacity memory cards have become incredibly cheap

I used to feel intimidated by raw processing when I had PSP by itself because it is a terrible raw converter. I shot JPEGs for 2 years with my D300 before getting LR2. Now when I look back at some of my shoots from then I am kicking myself for not having shot them in raw and having the ability to edit them

bobscho Loc: On The Delaware River

Thanks for your suggestions. Just reset D90 to RAW and will give it a try...
Bob