elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Hi All,

I'm here every day, and try to help others, especially new users and new photographers. But I know we all can learn something new...every day, if we permit ourselves. It's my turn to learn something.

I'm a dedicated Photoshop Users, and have been for many years since 2001, and continue every day. I do not use Lightroom. But I want to ask. I've just joined Kelby One. I respect Scott Kelby a great deal. My membership there offers avenues of learning in Lightroom. Will I learn something there that I can use there?

I do not batch anything. I do not store anything in any cloud. I archive my own RAW files here, and I thoroughly enjoy spending the time working on a single image via Photoshop, and usually with so many layers one might be worried the stack just might 'fall over'.

Having said all that, would I learn something there that I would not already have learned in Photoshop?

Thanks, in advance, and I welcome your feedback.

Bill

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

Bill, It boils down what you feel comfortable with and what your workflow is. Mine is Lightroom for a catalogue and non destructive changes and Photoshop when I want to get more sophisticated with Layers,etc.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Thank you Stan. I thought I would hear what you just said. But I'm a good listener, and look forward to what any and all might say.
Bill

Rwheless Loc: Houston, TX

I do not consider myself to be an expert in either of those Adobe tools, but I thought I would share what I do know about them. I shoot in RAW only and enjoy landscape, urban, low light, nature, and a little portrait photography.

Until about 2 years ago, I used Photoshop exclusively for all of my image adjustments, whether they were small tweaks to exposure or major graphic edits to create things like CD jackets, HDR stacks, special effects and things like that. Then a friend who is a pro asked me if I would like to earn a little extra money assisting him with his post production. What he wanted was someone to use Lightroom to cull through photoshoot images, categorize them, apply light editing, and then upload them by client into a website where his clients would go to view and select images, etc. In one sitting he had me trained on his workflow and never having used Lightroom, I was able to do the work.

As I continued to use Lightroom, I decided to use parts of the same workflow for my images, although I upload mine only for personal enjoyment and to share with friends. What I discovered after playing with Lightroom over the next few months was that it did a great job of applying basic adjustments to exposure in a non-destructive manner. The tool allows you to create virtual copies so that you can edit them different ways. It's easy to go forward and backward through the edit steps you have made and make changes to the individual steps like crop, filters, spot adjustments. Any edit can be quickly adjusted or deleted altogether. It is also essential for culling when I come home from a shoot with hundreds of images. I never thought it would happen but, I now only use Photoshop when I have some kind of major edit that requires multiple layers, or full-on graphic design with text etc.

So, I definitely think it is a tool worth looking at. You might find like I did that you use it 95% of the time.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Absolutely, but you have to open your mind to the possibilities with Lightroom. I was stuck in the Photoshop lane for years before a Lightroom class at Samys Camera in Los Angeles opened my mind to the possibilities.

Brucej67 Loc: Cary, NC

Except for the DAM what can you do in Lightroom that you can't do in ACR and Photoshop?

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

From an image editing perspective, LR can give you the exact same results as ACR. Image management in PS is accomplished with a file browser, which is very complete and allows you to add/change metadata, and has one advantage over LR - namely it can read all the file formats produced by Adobe software.

LR has a simpler, faster interface, and is geared towards getting a photographer from in-camera files to finished proofs in the shortest time possible. It cannot be considered a replacement for PS under any circumstances, since it is NOT designed for lots of local adjustment.

LR's print dialogue is easy and fast. LR's capability to let the user generate savable presets for anything - image searches, print settings, importing (renaming, adjusting, etc), image adjusting, export settings (renaming, file locations, color space/bit depth), file and or image sizing, LR's ability to use whatever external image processing you want - you are not limited to PS - and automatically add the results of the external editing to your catalog - that alone is priceless - all of this is extremely well organized and very fast to use.

Batch processing - something you say you don't need - is something LR does extremely well - and you can copy one or multiple adjustments from one image to another - or to a group of images.

Easy to use map-based geotagging not present in PS without an external app.

Easy to use photo book publishing with the Book module and Blurb

Slideshow creation - I use this sometimes in conjunction with a tethered camera to make a self-service photobooth - I connect the computer to a TV and set up a looping slideshow that shows the images that the subjects are taking of themselves, using a wireless remote shutter trigger. This is all made possible because LR can autoimport images in a watched folder, and the Slideshow module can display the contents of a collection as a slideshow.

If you are looking for better image quality, you won't find it in LR. Put another way - the results will be identical to what you get with ACR.

If you are looking to spend less time in front of a computer converting raw files - this might be certainly worth considering.

LR is not perfect - I find that Capture One is even better, faster, and deals with local adjustments far better than LR. But up until V12, it did not play at all with plugins. V12 is a departure from this, in that they now have a programmer's interface, and are inviting publishers of popular Photoshop/Lightroom plugins to work with C1. LR is slow when importing images - it needs to generate a viewable preview. Moving from one image to another if the previews are not already present can take several seconds - depending on whether you make a standard, high quality or smart preview.

Like yourself, I have been using Photoshop since forever (version 2.5, 1992, when they introduced the Windows version), I do not store images in Adobe Cloud (I use other clouds and online storage, though), and I use PS as my primary image finishing platform. But boy do I rely on LR to get me to a Photoshop-ready image.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Happy

I agree

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

IMHO it's always good to be in danger of learning something new.

I'm a LR/PS user. Started with GIMP, graduated to PS, then to LR/PS. Happy user of the Adobe photography package.

LR presents a fairly simple interface for basic global editing but recent editions have branched out into some quasi-pixel editing. I'm not producing world shaking images, and LR does the job for me about 90% of the time. PS does the other 10%.

But I don't use LR because of the editor. I use it because of the DAM. At my age, my memory is all digital. LR allows me to find things through keywords, and I have found useful images that I even forgot I took. The LR DAM works for me, but not for everyone. I have heard that some people use Bridge to organize things. I have something that works for me so I have not tried that. It has been said that Bridge is better for people who share images among individuals in a group for editing, e.g. a commercial photo organization.

I believe in a two-factor organization. For me, LR is the primary means of organization of my photos. I know how to use it and find things. However, there are a lot of family photos in my photopile and none of my family knows how to use LR. For that reason, my backup organizational method is the use of meaningful file names. Long ago I got Downloader Pro, a program that I use to transfer image files from the card to my computer. It allows me to rename selected photos on the card so that they have meaningful names, and place them into a folder with a meaningful name. That way my family has a chance at finding things by normal computer file searches.

My workflow is basically Card -> Downloader Pro (rename and create folder) -> LR -> PS (if necessary) -> LR.

A more complete description of my workflow can be found at
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1584 and
https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user-page?upnum=1595

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I'm certainly no export and only do what I would term "light editing" of my raw files. A few years back I bought LR 3 and it took me awhile to figure out how to use it. Now I'm on LR 6. I also have PS CS5 with ACR. What I'm now finding is that I'll work an image through LR and save it. For curiosity's sake, then I may run the same raw image through ACR. I do about the same tweaks, but the finished result is slightly different from the LR edited one. Never have figured out why. Sometimes I prefer the ACR one. Sometimes not.

Should you do it? One of the advantages of LR is that you can apply a certain develop preset and metadata to ALL of the imported images at time of import. That saves time. You can also apply a set metadata to all of selected images at once. That saves time. Anything that saves me time on the computer is good. I do NOT care about LR's image management system which most people rave about. To me it's a waste of time. I have about 10 external hard drives full of images, and usually only two of them are plugged into the computer at once. So LR can't ever find any of my images anyway until I plug in the right HD and tell LR where they are.

joanloy Loc: St. Louis, MO

I started out using Photoshop but have switched to Lightroom for the catalog and basic editing features. Then I use Photoshop for more in depth editing. A Lightroom feature that I really like is being able to make a virtual copy of a photo and edit it in different ways.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Rather than write what I do, I'll just say, DITTO. This is me too. I used to use PS only. I started using LR a year ago and do 95% of editing wit it. I found that I could make every jpg better, so now I shoot raw and I add the "auto" adjustment automatically on import, and that takes care of most of it and then fine tune as needed.

wmcy Loc: Charlotte

, especially the comments re Capture One.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

Hi Bill,

As you know, LR and PS were designed to work together as a system. I use both and together they improve both my final product and productivity. Even if you do not use LR for any part of your editing, it's ability to allow you to view many photos at one time and choose, discard and prioritize them for PS editing will greatly speed your editing process and save you a lot of aggravation. PS only allows you to make side-by-side comparison of two images at a time, LR many. That alone will make LR a valuable tool for you.

If you choose to do editing in LR, you will find that most of your photos will require only minor tweeks, which can be handled much faster in LR because many of those tweeks can be copied to multiple photographs at one time; i.e., once photo 1 is edited, two clicks and several similar photos can be matched to photo 1. That will leave you with only the most challenging photos that need the power of PS.

In short, I think you are making the right decision by learning at least the basics of LR.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

To all, I thank you for your feedback. It has been very enlightening, and I thank you all for that.

Bill