Gideon144 Loc: Denver, Colorado

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.

Whuff Loc: Marshalltown, Iowa

Lightroom is one of Adobe’s products and is one of the best known and used post processing programs. It is designed to also be a great photo organization product. It does both global (full photo) adjustments but also has some local (limited area) adjustment features. You see so many references to it because a majority of the photographers on this site use it.

Walt

Edit: It works well for the situation you describe.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

It integrates with Photo Shop, Adobe's high end digital editing program and Photo Shop Elements a scaled down program that features parts of both Photo Shop and Light Room. Elements you can purchase on disk or by download as a perpetual licence but Light Room and Photoshop are only available on a per month basis ($9.99 a month). You install them on your computer and use them to edit your digital images but if you ever stop paying after a month or so they stop working and you can access your photo files to print or transfer somewhere else but no new imports or editing. Some of the rental plans come with on line storage for your photos - those in the know will only use it as a backup to their files they maintain themselves.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Lightroom, and Photoshop, are the Gold Standards of digital photo manipulation. Anything else is just a copy.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Gitchigumi Loc: Wake Forest, NC

One very valuable feature of Lightroom is cataloging the photos. This amounts to a database of all photos within the LR environment. The user applies keywords to each photo and can later search the database for all photos with those keywords. Very useful when dealing with many hundreds or thousands of photos! As an example, we have more than 20k photos. Without LR cataloging, finding a particular photo would be difficult. Searching to find all "horses, winter, beach" would net the 10 or so that I want. Or, I could find all those that use a particular camera or lens. Powerful stuff!👍🤓👍

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

There are a lot of photo editing programs out there, and while so many of us use the Adobe CC subcription with LR Classic CC and PS CC, others will find programs that suit their needs for free, a flat fee, or a different subscription. But, as others have said, LR and PS are considered the gold standard. If you want to investigate further, there is a free trial available. Most programs will offer a trial period. In the meantime, if the point and shoot you own came with an editing program, that is a good place to start. Once you get familiar with using the controls [usually sliders, tools, and buttons], it will give you an idea of some things that can be done on the computer.

Whenever you decide to go to a camera that lets you control the settings more than the P&S, there will be a whole new learning curve! I know because I went through it myself 6-7 years ago. I had a digital P&S, then decided on a DSLR. Bought the best I could afford [a crop-sensor camera, but at that time the top of that line] and gradually learned to use it. Now I also own a full frame camera and continue to learn more and more all the time!

Hope this helps.

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

The Photo Processing Programs I use are PhotoScape X Free - Intuitive and easy to use. A really good standalone program. (85% of the time - supports Canon's 5DIV Latest Raw files), Adobe LightRoom CC 6 Verison 6.14 (Not Free - supports Canon's 5DIV Latest Raw files) Standalone (5%), and Picasa 3 (2% to import and organize). For “special projects” (8%) I use the following freeware; Andrea Moasic, Raw Therapee 5.3, Regi Stax 6, Noiseware Community Edition, and Canon Digital Pro 4. We all wish you well on your photographic journey, JimmyT sends. http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/download.php and PhotoscapeX tutorials: http://x.photoscape.org/help.php

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

One of the joys of digital is that you can be the technician as well as the photographer.
Not everyone enjoys that, but it's not that hard to do. It's always enjoyable (to me) to be in a position to learn something new.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

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.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop as the two main processing applications for my images. However, if you are absolutely new to digital processing, these two programs may be difficult for you to learn, especially Photoshop. There are many digital processing applications today that are wonderful and may be easier for some people to learn, such as Luminar. The best thing for a person new to digital photography is to go to the various application web sites where most of the companies provide a free 30-day trial. Try out Luminar first. If you are going to use Lightroom then read the LR Help Manual online, or read a book about it, or take a class before you begin. This is probably good advice for using any software processing program. It can be overwhelming at first for new users.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Exact-a-mundo! Lightroom is what the majority of people use these days. You should try it out.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

LR is an adobe product that is simply one of several software programs that allow users to manipulate, store and edit (to some degree) photographs for a monthly fee. Other programs offer similar abilities that do not require the monthly fee, but use a single upfront fee to purchase. Some prefer LR because of its longevity in the market and its depth. Some prefer other programs such as Luminar for its simpler interface and time-saving options, others On One, etc. Do your homework with free single month try-outs of almost every similar program to see what works for you... Your choice...

Cheers!

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

While I certainly agree that Photoshop and Lightroom have become a defacto standard, I would disagree that anything else is just a copy. The three best professional level raw converters are Capture One Pro, DXO Photolab Elite, and ACR/Lightroom in that order. Reviewers have come to that conclusion on many occasions, although some don't rank the order of the top three while others do. Of course Photoshop has a whole host of pixel level functionality not available in those other programs, but the choice of software one uses depends, in part, on what your needs are and how you want to accomplish them.

After 8+ years, I don't use Lightroom and Photoshop anymore. I moved on to DXO Photolab, with DXO Viewpoint 3 and DXO FilmPack 5 and the DXO Nik Collection integrated into it. That combination of tools gets me better results than I ever could in Lightroom and Photoshop, and allows me to do it much more quickly, and doesn't require me to import my images. DXO PRIME noise reduction is significantly better than anything available by Adobe, and you can apply sharpening in DXO with less concern for added artifacts. But the feature set is much more limited, and as a result it will not meet everybody's needs.

Todd G

You will discover phones now don`t have a cord.