BuddhaRunner Loc: Worcester, Massachusetts

Hi everyone,
Somewhat new to this forum and really enjoy and use the advice I've seen here. I've been using Adobe Elements 14 for a while now, it's fine, nothing to rave about but no big complaints, either. I did have a subscription service for Adobe Photoshop but found it was much more than I needed. Okay, that said, it seems like most of the photo processing advice I see in this forum pertains to Lightroom and rarely if ever to Elements. Would it be worthwhile to obtain Lightroom? Does anyone know the major differences between the Lightroom and Elements programs? I bought Elements 14 for $85 and Lightroom 6 (on Amazon) sells for 142. The money isn't really that much of an issue though ... I can afford to get Lightroom if it is a better program.
I mostly take landscapes, but want to start doing portrait photography as well. Ooh, and macro, too! Also, I take photos of local artist's work and create a simple web page for them to showcase their paintings and sculptures (infrequent, informal "work"). I have maybe 3000 photos in my "library." My camera is a Canon T5i with 18-55mm and 75-300mm lenses (looking to get a macro lens - so expensive, tho!).
Two things that I'm especially interested in is organizing my present and future photos (right now they are organized by date) and also batch converting RAW photos to JPG.
Hope this message is clear, please ask any questions to clear things up! :-)
Thanks! Steve

cmoroney Loc: Pasadena, California

LR is an accompaniment to either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, not a replacement. PS and PSE are meant for detailed editing using layers, whereas LR is a top-notch organizer of your photos that has some editing ability built into it. Since they're both made by Adobe, they integrate seamlessly together. I highly recommend getting LR as its organizational capabilities are really second-to-none, and it's the perfect counterpart to PSE.

You'll need to read a bit about LR before diving in, but if you understand how the catalogue works and the fact that LR doesn't "store" your photos, but rather just links to them, and resist the temptation to do any re-organization of your folder structure outside of LR, you're good to go. One of the beauties of LR is that you can organize your photos in a structure completely of your own choosing, and LR will work with whatever you decide to do.

Even though I haven't done so, I understand from other posts that LR is also excellent at batch processing.

Catherine

BuddhaRunner Loc: Worcester, Massachusetts

Thank you so much Catherine! So having both Lightroom and Elements is a plus. I didn't realize they complemented each other.

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

Assuming your skill level will not remain static, as your expertise and corresponding expectations advance, you may find that the better processing options in PS will better suit your needs. Leaving the price out of it, at the moment it's a toss up between PS and PSE for you. But down the road, if you are doing landscapes and other images, you will see some benefit from the added features in PS.

My suggestion is to get the subscription - it's only $10/month for both LR and PS, and both are routinely updated and upgraded for no additional charge. You only need to use the parts of PS that you can handle at the present, basically using it as you would PSE for the most part, so it is not a total waste. And as Catherine stated, LR is a companion and complementary product to either PS or PSE. There are deals at B&H for the subscription for $8?mo, and you can download and use it for 30 days before you commit I think, making it very cost effective. Maintaining a 16 bit workflow for your images will result in better images, especially those that push the envelope on dynamic range.

BuddhaRunner Loc: Worcester, Massachusetts

Great tip on the subscriptions - thanks Gene51!

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Absolutely. Lightroom will let you fiddle with exposure, white balance, highlights, shadows, etc before you export to Elements. Will make a big difference in your workflow.

janelux Loc: Florida

Elements and the full Photoshop are both pixel editors, meaning that your changes are "baked" into the photo once you hit the Save button. You can not go back to the original photo unless you have saved a second copy.

Lightroom is a non-destructive editor and you can easily go back to the original photo anytime, or anywhere in the editing process to make changes. Even after you have printed it. Yes, there is a learning curve to Lightroom, but it is sooooo worth it. And the subscription gives you free updates to the program as they are made, as well as the full version of Photoshop. To me it's well worth the $10 a month.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

You can also save as copy and original remains untouched.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I use Elements 14. Since it's an Adobe product and uses a similar version of data base catalogue in its Organizer as Lightroom does. As with Lightroom, its Editor is non-destructive with two caveats - always make your edits on layer copies and save as a PSD file. The PSD is a default Photoshop generated file and allows you to go back into it for additional editing without losing data in the original, similar to what happens when you edit in Lightroom.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Lightroom's strength is as a raw editor whereas Elements strength is as a pixel editor. One is not a replacement for the other. In fact many people like myself use Lightroom as a front end to make exposure modifications to raw images and then pass those modified images to Elements when layers or a pixel editor are needed. Some people seem to think Lightroom's primarily use is as an image catalog. That is absolutely incorrect. It is a state of the art raw editor that happens to have strong image cataloging features. Lightroom is based on Adobe's Camera Raw functionality which is significantly stronger than the light weight version included in Elements. Lightroom also contains functionality which is not in Camera Raw.

lsimpkins Loc: SE Pennsylvania

By this Gene is comparing PS with its 16-bit adjustments and filters to PSE that still has some that are only 8-bit. I agree that LR is a good companion to either. In fact, for the images I take, most of my adjustments are done in LR in addition to the key-wording and other organizational functions at which it excels. However, there are some things that just can't be done in LR, or take far less effort in PS.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

I guess I'm going to be the "odd man out" here. About four years ago I started processing with PSE10--not to difficult to learn and did everything I wanted--admittedly, I don't do Portraits or Macro. I bought PSE14 as soon as it came out and like the new features very much

I tried Lightroom a year or so ago, and found it confusing--maybe that's my getting older as most people seem to like it. I couldn't get used to not saving the edited copy; it always seemed to put the edited copy in strange files sometimes never to be seen again. I borrowed Kelby's book on Lightroom from a neighbor, and I didn't find that to be much help either; he assumes the reader has prior experience so ignores the basics that beginners need.

rmvdw

mwsilvers is right on. Go ahead and buy both. Now Lightroom 6 along with current Elements 14. Both for around $200. I just like being able to have physical disk to run them on your laptop and desktop computers then sell them down the road to purchase a newer version. Also, I'm afraid at some point Adobe will only offer them digitally, they make much more money that way.

FloydP Loc: Arvada, CO

I started using Lightroom several months ago after struggling with PSE14(and previous versions) for a long time. There is no doubt that Lightroom has a significant learning curve to become really proficient. However the greatest value to me has been the catalogueing feature of Lightroom. I started with a collection of about 20,000 pictures largely filed by date on my hard drive. BUT, I could not find anything I wanted to look at. Simply, I could not remember when I took something I would like to review given my library covered about 50 years of photo including several years of converted slides. Enter Lightroom. While not perfect, I can now find most anything I want to look at in 2 or 3 keystrokes due to the keyword and collections capabilities. This has made Lightroom my best investment ever. There is lots and lots of training videos on YouTube and direct from to help shorten the learning curve, all for free.
There is substantial editing capabilities to accomplish basic edits. There are endless testimonials that Lightroom does about 90 percent of most peoples editing. Go for it and good luck.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Excellent reply