PhotoDerek Loc: County Durham, UK.

Fellow Photographers
I am a Nikon shooter using NX-d and more frequently Photoshop elements 2019 bought as a one off in early 2019. I am thinking of upgrading to a monthly subscription - LR and PS £9.99 and Ps £19.99. Cannot understand why 2 progs are £9.99 and one prog Ps is £19.99 or should I continue with the original photoshop elements 2019 with which I am quite happy and getting good pictures. I do not need cloud storage, have a Lacie hard drive (2TB) and I am a ruthless editor - crap gets thrown out.
Advice gratefully received.
Derek.

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Hi Derek, If you are happy with your Photoshop elements, then you might want to stay with that. It is paid for. Another option would be Affinity Photo fo $49, and it is yours, all paid for, and free updates. It's a thought.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Derek, I look at it this way. I am paying for LR and they are throwing in PS for free. (I actually pay 32 USD for the entire plan since I use several of their other programs.) In the beginning, I used PSE in addition to these trying to figure out how to edit. I eventually shifted to LR for several reasons.

First of all, LR's catalog with keywords allows you to find any of your photos in under 4 seconds or so. For example, I may want those few photos of some obscure flower I took out of the 50,000 pictures in my catalog. Select the keyword and those shots pop up immediately. Or, I might have a thousand pictures of turkey vultures taken over the years. I can find those taken in a certain location or time based upon the camera or lens I have.

Next is the suite of developing tools. Like many of us here, I edit over 90 per cent of my pictures just in LR. The tools are just that powerful and easy to use. No need for any plug-ins. For the rest, into PS I go. I make my own presets to speed things along. All programs require you to export to jpg or tiff so you can distribute your edits. LR's export function with your own presets make that easy and fast too.

I wish I could give you a feature-by-feature rundown of LR and PSE but I have not used the latter in years. LR does what I want. The two big negatives to LR have been the learning curve. Not the fastest or easiest but once you get there, LR is well-worth the investment. The other negative is that you must copy, delete and move files in LR to assure the catalog knows where they are. If you do the functions in the operating system, I guarantee that you will want to tear LR out of your computer.

As for their 15- or 30-day trial, do not count on learning LR well-enough to decide if you want to keep it unless you have a personal tutor. You might want to look at adobe.tv for the tutorials. Probably the best place to start. Considering how much we have already spent in time and money, the subscription is one of the cheaper and more rewarding investments you will make.

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

This should lend some clarity.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/compare-plans.html?promoid=695P7SPW&mv=other

The PS-only plan offers 1Tb cloud storage, and has a few apps that the Photography bundle doesn't include. The bundle only offers 20 gb cloud, with the option of getting 1Tb cloud for an extra £10/mo.

I think the bundle is your best value.

As far as staying with PSE, you may end up outgrowing it at some point in the future. It is unlikely that this will happen with PS. And while LR has the same capabilities as Adobe Camera Raw, the editing interface is better organized and faster to use.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Not clear. Which do you think is better, LR or ACR?

Storage does not seem to be his issue.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

LR offers a whole ecosystem for storage and filing. I personally despise LR and never use it, as I don't wish to stuck with proprietary file storage. I organize myself in Windows and am perfectly happy with Bridge. For work with raw files I use ACR, which does everything LR does in terms of processing, and always go from ACR into PS to finish with various third party plug-ins and often using layers, which LR can't handle. I save in 16 bit in order to have flexibility if I need to make changes after the initial edit, and if necessary I can always go back to the raw with adjustments made in ACR saved to a sidecar file just like LR.

cedymock Loc: Irmo, South Carolina

Questions if answer will help determine your need.

Professional or enthusiast?
Do you keep 1000 photos or 50,000 per year?
Have you tried trial version to determine the difference in PSE or trial version of other editing programs?

I am enthusiast and do not need to catalog 25,000 to more per year, nor do I need to edit multiple photos at a time, however if I did a subscription to LR & PS is what I would be using. Personally very happy with Affinity Photo.

Gatorcoach Loc: New Jersey

FWIW I have used Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5.7 for many years and have been comfortable with them. Yes, the keyword feature of LR makes filing and finding any picture a snap. A friend of mine does not use any folders, only his primary collection. Thousands and thousands of pictures and he can find what he wants in seconds.

As said, I've used them for years but found the subscription plan to have more features (ex. "Dehaze"), continually updates and, most important to me, the tools are improved and work better.

PSE 2019 is still very current and does a lot. It's up to you to decide whether moving up is necessary to you and you are ready for the commitment to learning LR. If not, wait until you are, or try the trial subscription.

tcthome Loc: NJ

After reading all the replies, If you like post processing, I suggest subscribing to the LR/PS $120 for the year plan for a year & decide.

Bruce M. Loc: Longueuil, Quebec, CANADA

My vision is not what it used to be, I thought the subject was Monty Python so I jumped right in, only to be disappointed in finding out what this post really was about. Sorry, no pun intended!

anotherview Loc: California

You have answered your own question. You are happy with PSE. You can always move up later to the the full Photoshop if and when you outgrow PSE.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

I have the photographers package, Photoshop and Lightroom for $9.99 per month.

Red6

I have been in your shoes except in the reverse. While I was taking photography classes at the local university, we were encouraged to use LR and PS. I had whole courses devoted to these two subjects and I learned a lot about photography and editing. LR is great and for most photographers is all you ever need. But PS comes in handy to fix those things that LR does not have the tools to handle. LR/PS was designed to handle almost any situation an everyday photographer would need. It is overkill for most of us. But we use it because that is what the "real" experts use.

However, LR's rules for organizing and maintaining their files are very rigid and strict. Violate these rules and you can spend hours searching for and locating a specific image. If you are super organized and understand how file directories and folders work, this is fine. But if you get sloppy, you will suffer. UHH has someone here almost every week who has lost track of images in LR due to some mistake they made in storing their images or some misstep in selecting some feature that affects their storage.

The other issue is cost. I retired last year and one of my first efforts was to start controlling the amount of cash outflow. While $10 per month is cheap for tools as powerful as LR and PS, one really needs to ask if you really need all that capability for what you do. If that is your passion then $10 is a small price to pay. But if not, it adds up to something else to pay for that sits on your shelf or computer and is unused. LR/PS is going to cost you around $120/yr. A good deal if shoot a lot and use it. PSE 2020 at $80 or Affinity at $49 once is a great deal and does almost as much. Even if you replace it with an upgrade version every 2-3 years, you are still ahead in money.

I decided to try PS Elements 2020 and loved it. It is much easier to use than LR/PS, lower in cost at $80 one time cost. It even has an organizer that works a little like LR is you want to use it. Affinity is another that looks very good, I have some friends that use it and love it. It is also low cost at around $50. If you want free, try GIMP. It is a freeware PS clone and from what I have read and heard does almost everything PS does and is free for the download. Actually, you could get all three packages and spend about the same for a year of LR/PS.

Look at your needs and go from there. To me, buying into LR/PS is like buying a 12 passenger van when all you need is a small compact sedan.

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

There is no difference in result between the two. I was pretty clear that the difference is in the user interface, which is better organized and suited for volume work.

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

Lightroom is not particularly rigid. But you can't use it as a file browser (like Bridge), nor make changes outside LR without updating those changes in LR. That is not rigid, but it is very logical.

People get in trouble because they try to use Lr's catalogue in ways that it wasn't designed for, and because they lack a basic understanding of fiLe and folder management.