Gideon144 wrote:
I am new to digital photography. We discovered current cameras do not use film. We purchased a good point and shoot to learn how to use these cameras. Reading your comments it appears "lightroom" has replaced the darkroom. For example the question about the too bright sky I would under expose the photo and have the technician burn the part's under exposed. Most comments here talked about lightroom.
Adobe *Photoshop* Lightroom CLASSIC CC 2019 is a complement to Adobe Photoshop CC 2019. It has been developed over the last 13 years as a set of professional photographers' workflow tools. The idea was to be able to organize, rate, edit, develop, print, post images to web sites, print books, and export files for further editing in Photoshop and other applications. Now there is a multi-platform version of Lightroom (Lightroom CC 2019) that runs on Macs, PCs, and iOS and Android devices (tablets and phones). That version can be networked and synchronized via Adobe Cloud, so an image can be accessed and edited anywhere. (Lightroom CLASSIC is typically used locally, although it can be networked to cloud services.
Photoshop CC is an enormously powerful, complex, feature-laden tool. It serves many audiences in the advertising field, the graphic arts (offset lithographers' arena), as well as in photography. Pro photographers need its true power for a small percentage of their work that makes it to a "finishing" stage. For everything else and all that comes before, Lightroom is the tool for EFFICIENT WORKFLOW.
In every professional photographer's workflow, there are needs to:
> Move raw files and/or JPEG files from camera to computer
> Organize files in folders — possibly for use by multiple applications
> Catalog files in some way, adding metadata to identify them
> Cull edit and rate files for processing priority
> Adjust or develop files in reference to on-screen "proxies", saving only development commands to be executed at export or upload or print time, without EVER touching an original file (so you can start over!)
> Develop raw files into images and bring out the best in them
> Tweak JPEG images within their limited latitude to improve them (with minimal losses!)
> Crop, rotate, perform minor retouching and spot removal
> Adjust exposure, black, shadow, highlight, and white levels
> Adjust color temperature of white balance
> Change other image parameters such as sharpness, noise, clarity, saturation, hue, contrast...
> Export images in multiple file formats, bit depths, ICC profiles, image sizes and file sizes, for various purposes
> Bounce files to Photoshop and back, or to other "plug-in" applications and back
> Make virtual duplicates of files
> Post images to Internet online galleries
> Prepare photo books such as wedding albums or travelogues
> Prepare slide shows of "proofs" for presentation to clients
> Compose and print images to locally attached printers or to files for labs
That's just scratching the surface, and all before you get to Photoshop itself! The key characteristic of Lightroom Classic is that it is a non-destructive, PARAMETRIC editor. Photoshop is a pixel-level editor. They are very, very different, yet share some of the same features (most notably, Adobe Camera Raw). They are complementary, yet one may be used without the other.