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I've got PSE9 and LR3 and it's a brilliant combination. To add to what Shawry says, LR3 is stupendous for getting the best out of raw files and PSE9 gives you a good array of options, particularly the ability to work with layers.
The range of control LR3 gives you over raw files far exceeds what you can do on PSE9 and once you get to grips with it you'll wonder how how ever did without it.
Quote: Lightroom to adjust and convert your raw files then PS to add the finesse. so the answer is both.
ps converts the raw files too.
Unless you mean convert in a different context
i have cs5 would light room 3 be a good combo there or does cs5 do the lot anyway.
It depends what you do. I don't do much digital manipulation outside tonal adjustment. noise removal, removing blemishes, sharpening. I do go big on keywording and organisation of my images so that I can find them when I need them.
For my needs, Lightroom is perfect. I also have Photoshop but that is better for creating one image from another, merging images, really, it is a graphics program.
If you work with jpg, then Lightroom is a waste of money. It uses the logic derived from the darkroom. You have a negative (your RAW image). You never change that, all changes are stored as, essentially records of what you did with that image. You then export that image in changed form as whatever you wish, for a web page, for a family album print, for a client. But those changes exported never, ever affect the original image. So if, in a couple of years time, a new hotshot form of noise reduction is discovered, you still have your original, untouched and can use it on that image.
Photoshop is about changing the images themselves. Of course, you can keep the original in Photoshop too but it is not designed to work from that basis.
All in all, if you want to manipulate your images as 'art', Photoshop is your friend. If you are a professional photographer needing cataloging and image correction, Lightroom.
Ideally, both - but I have to say that since buying Lightroom a couple of years ago, I use Photoshop rarely. But, then, I approach my photography from the professional point of view of getting an image how I want it at the camera stage. If you see the camera stage as only the beginning of making an image, Photoshop is for you.
Whichever way you look at it - and neither is any more or less valid, in my opinion, Adobe win.
Quote: Lightroom is a great tool and works side by side PS. Lightroom to adjust and convert your raw files then PS to add the finesse. so the answer is both.
Perfect.
The whole Lightroom ethos is to retain unchanged the RAW image from the sensor and thus all of the quality the camera is capable of. You then derive all further images from that original quality.
If you have a RAW capable camera and make your pix as jpg, you have given your camera control over sharpness, colour temperature and other parameters. These cannot be retrieved, the RAW information has been thrown away.
It undermines the whole ethos of Lightroom. You can use Lightroom with jpg originals but it then becomes a DAM rather than a digital darkroom. In the old film analogy, if you use Lightroom with jpg, it's like making a print from a negative and then working from that.
Lightroom goes to enormous trouble to make all changes in a database file, not the RAW image. What's the point of going to all that trouble when the original image is itself a derivative?
Lightroom works with jpg originals but if you look at the development controls, they alter parameters which have already been fixed in a jpg. Input sharpening? A jpg has already been input sharpened. Colour temperature? Fixed in a jpg. Every time you save a jpg, you recompress it, adding compression artifacts to compression artefacts. Every time you export a jpg made from a RAW, it is a fresh compression giving the least degradation for a given compression ratio.
Quote: What's the point of going to all that trouble when the original image is itself a derivative?
Admittedly, I am no expert, but do ALL digital cameras have the option of saving as a RAW file.... and what about mobile phone cameras, what file format are those images saved as as I not aware that the iPhone is listed as a RAW file format in Lightroom's specifications ?
And what about scanned negatives / transparencies? I suspect most people would save as as jpg / tif although my software does allow the RAW format of DNG
I believe all digital SLRs work in RAW and some bridge cameras and upper end compact types. Camera phones don't use RAW as their lenses are pretty rubbish, the sensor is very tiny and RAW requires a lot of internal processing.
Scanning results in jpegs not RAW although you could "scan" a printed image in rAW by taking a photo of it with a DSLR.
Further to what Lemmy says about RAW, RAW files contain a lot more information than a jpeg. This enables a RAW editor such as Lightroom to deal better with burn out highlites or blocked shadows for example. RAW files are just collections of numbers, billions of them. A JPEG is a visual representation of those numbers akin to a print.
I was lucky. When I first bought a digital SLR, Lightroom had just been introduced and I liked the look of it. I have now upgraded through LR1, LR2 and LR3 as each upgrade became available.
It has become the "hub" of all my post-camera workflow. I download the .NEF files from my memory cards to my PC using the Lightroom "Import" procedure and then sort, grade, rate and catalogue them within Lightroom. Basic Raw processing, adjustments to exposure, colour balance, clarity/vibrance/saturation, etc are all done within Lightroom, using either LR or Custom presets where appropriate. Ditto for camera and lens corrections.
If I need further processing, I then edit from within Lightroom using either Photoshop, Silver Efex, ColorEfex or HDR Efex as appropriate and save the results back into Lightroom where, finally, I will deal with sharpening and noise reduction.
For me, that is just so amazingly intuitive compared to more convoluted programs (although not everyone has the same type of intuition I admit).
However, if Lightroom had not been available when I first entered digital photography and I had been faced with changing my workflow procedures by importing tens of thousands of existing images into Lightroom, I might have had second thoughts.
I too have both Lightroom and CS5. Lightroom is brilliant, but for those final tweaks Photoshop takes some beating.
That said if I'd baught CS5 first I wouldn't have bothered with Lightroom as the RAW converter in CS5 is virtually the same, just not quite as intuitive.
I don't know what the current incarnation of Elements is like, tho If all you do is relatively minor tweeks it should be more than sufficiant to use alongside Lightroom.
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