John7199 Loc: Eastern Mass.

Hoggers

I have photoshop and I am ashamed to say I don't know what version (9.99 a month for an annual subscription). I use it occasionally with good results. I also have Lightroom. I haven't tried Lightroom because I am more familiar with PS's layout. I recently heard that Photoshop Elements is cheaper than regular PS and more suited to photography as opposed to graphics. Question; should I be using Lightroom or elements if I am only a sometime PS user. The one thing I will not give up is Sky Replacement. Does Elements or LR have sky replacement? I love that! What do you Hoggers think. (be kind)
John

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The sky replacement in Photoshop has been enhanced recently. Stick with it if that is what you like. Photoshop Elements has a free trial. Try it before you buy it.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

First off you already have Lightroom (LR) (the latest version)
Second what you are proposing is to stop using PS CC, use LR (older) and a scaled down version of PS CC.

PSE + LS (Classic) will set you back to more than what you pay for a year. If you play the upgrade game, you will end up with a lesser product all the time.

Stay put, learn LR CC.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Your subscription pays for 'free' access to a wealth of video training directly from Adobe. Just sign-in and search the training options in the support section of their Adobe.com website. You-Tube also has more free video training than you could watch in a life-time.

The type of 'shooter' your are (and the type of digital editor) tends to determine the software best suited for your needs. Replacing a sky is a pretty substantial change that PS (or PSE) exists to perform. But, for leveling, cropping and exposure adjustments are easier and quicker to accomplish in LR than either version of PS/PSE. Working on large quantities of similarly exposed images, with similar edits, also is a forte of LR. Working in as a native 16-bit editor on RAW files also is a feature of the subscription software, not PSE.

Jrhoffman75 Loc: Conway, New Hampshire

It’s not clear from the OP's post whether he has a legacy version of Lightroom or is talking about Lightroom that comes with the Adobe plan.

There is no more Lightroom CC. There is either Lightroom Classic (LrC icon) or Lightroom (Lr icon).

LrC is the desktop based version.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

9.99 a month for an annual subscription = PS CC, LR CC....

Jrhoffman75 Loc: Conway, New Hampshire

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

PS and PS Elements move actual pixels around easily, like replacing a sky or adding a patch and working with them on layers. Lightroom does not do this except to the degree there is very limited cloning stamp.

John7199 Loc: Eastern Mass.

Thanks for the advice. I'll take it all into consideration.
John

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

Lightroom comes with Photoshop through the 9.99/month (plus sales tax) program.

Lightroom is a light editor. Photoshop is a heavy duty editor. The advantage of using Lightroom is the organization you can get from it. If you are a phototographer that doesn't take many photos, you may be able to deal without the organizing capability. Personally, when my photopile exceeded 10,000 images I had trouble finding things and Lightroom made it possible. PSElements can be cheaper if you never update it, but PSE is a light version of PS. If you're familiar with PS, you should probably stick with it.

Since Lightroom comes with the subscription, there's no cost to using it (other than the time to learn it). Lightroom is my first line of entry for an image. I add keywords that help find things later and do some basic editing. If you need heavier editing, you can send the image from Lightroom to Photoshop. When you're done in Photoshop, saving the image will send it back to Lightroom for the organization (as a separate image).

If you want to know what version you're using, in Photoshop go to Help => About Photoshop and click on that. It should give you a dialog with the current version near the top.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

You can do sky replacement in Elements, but you have do it manually. From what I've seen, Photoshop (not Elements) will automatically replace your sky. If I'm wrong on that last point, don't jump on me too hard because I'm an Elements user and still haven't plumbed its depths.

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

Photoshop will automatically replace your sky. It also modifies the image to simulate the effects on the foreground. This can present problems when you have people in the image. Faces can pick up a color cast from the new sky. I find that sometimes I have to paint out the section of the foreground sky mask manually to clean up the faces.

So PS is not fully automatic for sky replacement.

terryMc Loc: Arizona's White Mountains

If you have the Photographer's package, you have Photoshop and Lightroom, as others have said, but what no one has mentioned is that you also get Bridge and Camera Raw (ACR.) Lightroom is just ACR with a database attached, and ACR has all the same functionality and the added benefit of being able to be used as a Photoshop filter. It can be set to open all your raw files and also jpegs. You can batch edit files just as in Lightroom, and you can then open them directly in Photoshop to do whatever you do there.

As for organization, I have always used Bridge for that. Bridge is a browser, not a database, and changes you make to files happen on the drive, and are permanent, but there is nothing to corrupt and have to reconstruct, as when Lightroom's database fails you. You can create Favorites, Collections, Smart Collections, add keywords, sort by numerous methods—I have never needed Lightroom, and I have never understood its appeal.

mangurian

After considerable experience (and expenditure of money) I have concluded:

For modest all-around photo editing: Affinity Photo is much better (and less costly) than Photoshop Elements.

For serious in depth photo editing: A Lightroom/PS Photography subscription at $10/month is the best option. I
resisted this option for a long time and only recently gave in. PS/LR is superior.

caveats: (1) Since DXO Photolab corrects optics for camera/lens combinations not just for lenses, I have found it is better on correcting optics on RAW photos (in my case Canon RAWS on an R6 with various lenses) than any app I have tried.
(2) Topaz AI sharpening is superior to anything I have found for focus or motion correction.