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Hi again all. I'm back for more advise (or maybe just clarification).
Over the past few years, dont ask me why, I have managed to accumulate the following programs :-
Elements 7
Lightroom 3
Photoshop CS4 Extended
Noiseware Professional
Camera Raw
At the moment I only ever use Lightroom and CS4. I have never ever used Camera Raw and forgotten Elements long ago.
I never use Noiseware as I found it to difficult to understand. Mostly I do my sharpening in Lightroom but sometimes in CS4.
Question..........
Am I right to ignore Camera Raw as it dosent do anything that is not in Lightroom ?
Is there any real advantage in Noiseware for an amateur ?
I'm just trying to clear my head about Camera Raw in particular as every time I watch instructional videos on CS4, they seem to be always working with Camera Raw.
I know there is no answer to this, only opinions, but I would like to hear yours.
John
Lightroom uses the same RAW processing engine as CS.... so it uses Camera RAW as well !
It is fully integrated and consequently you cannot see it as a stand alone feature.
Take a look at the the adjustments.... Exposure, Clarity etc. etc. see any similarity between CS & Lightroom 
Thanks JJGEE, does that mean that lightroom is really a cataloging program and that the developement tools are exactly the same as the ones in CS4 ?
That being the case, Camera Raw is superfluous to my needs and I need not use it at all.
Adobe Camera RAW can be fully integrated with Photoshop. As has been indicated ACR is the RAW conversion 'engine' in Lightroom too.
Lightroom is an image-management database. If you don't need to manage your images, you don't need Lightroom. I don't need a management facility so I use CS5 with ACR 6.4 and I don't bother with Lightroom.
I think Lightroom is more than just ACR with a database bolted on? It's easy to apply the same settings to multiple photos compared to ACR.
Not that I'm a Lighroom fan, I use Canon's own Digital Photo Professional for all my RAW processing, with direct transfer to Photoshop CS5 for complex retouching.
John, give DPP a good try, you might be surprised at how good it is. It's free with most Canon DSLRs but it's frequently updated so go to the web to download the latest version.
I always found it a bit of a faff to download DPP—Canon don't seem to make it readily available online. Great quality raw conversion though, and especially easy to get good colour into your photos.
That said, Lightroom and CS4 is a pretty lethal combination. I still use Photoshop for intricate cloning, adjustment layers, colour control etc.
Addressing a couple of the OPs questions, noise reduction in Lightroom is exceptional. That's one of its advantages over Aperture, and I'd imagine it makes standalone apps unneccessary.
One difference between ACR and Lightroom is that the histogram in ACR reflects the output colour space. You don't get that in Lightroom. That becomes useful if you want to pick a colour space to suit the image.
Quote: Canon don't seem to make it readily available online
I'm surprised to hear you say that Glenn. The first Google result for the search term 'Canon DPP' is this link http://www.canon-europe.com/support/software/dpp/
Maybe I'm wrong—always eminently possible, but I think that link leads to updates rather than full installs. Actually I think it does install the whole thing, but it needs some fancy registry fiddling to actually get it working unless you already have the app on your PC.
I don;t know if things have changed recently but a couple of years ago I wanted to reload all of DPP and had to root around until I found a link in the website for Canon Australia (I am in UK). At the same time I found some updates were persent on Australia or Europe that were not on the US website. So I agree with Glen they do not make it easy!
Glenn and Mike you're right. Different areas of the world roll out newer versions at different times (for no good reason I can see) and if you can't show you're an existing user you have to use a reg trick.
Installation
Make sure that at least one of the following applications is installed.
- Digital Photo Professional
- EOS Viewer Utility
- File Viewer Utility
- RAW Image Task
If the applications above are not installed on a PC running WindowsVista, make sure that you prepare one of the following CD-ROMs.
- EOSDIGITAL Solution Disk v1 to v17.x
- DIGITAL CAMERA Solution Disk v2
Thanks all, from the above I take it that I only need to choose between Lightroom, ARC and DPP.
(because they are all basically the same except for the cataloging side, there is no point in using more than one of them ?)
As I have been using Lightroom for a few years and have gotten to know it quite well, I think I will stick to the Lightroom/CS4 combo.
Thanks again for the clarification, it helps if I can concentrate my learning on fewer programs.
John
John a good test might be to process the same raw file with all three. Where Lighroom drives me nuts is the myriad of sliders with adjustments from -100 to + 100. I found I could spend ages trying to get the perfect balance. In DPP it's much simpler and you're forced to make decisions.
I also love DPP because it's the only program that stores the develop settings within the raw file (this is incredibly useful when I take raw files from one machine to another or open them across a network)
Most of all I love the output. It's the same algorithms that are used in camera to produce Canon jpeg files.
Try this: revisit an old raw file that just wouldn't come out well in Lightroom or ACR and try it in DPP. You might be very surprised at how well it will looks once you've fiddled with the picture style (try standard at first) then the contrast and sharpness. If you change picture style remember to readjust sharpness etc.
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