Lightroom vs Photoshop CS3

[larrys]

Sorry for another question on these two. I currently have no photo processing knowledge but from a past thread am leaning toward getting Lightroom for my Mac at home. I take mostly landscape shots and want to make them look their best. I can see myself wanting to make some panos as well as combine four or five pictures into one using over and under exposed shots to bring out the detail in the shadows and sky. Can Lightroom do these two tricks or would I need CS3 for them?

I guess I am also wanting to know what are the major things CS3 does that Lightroom cannot do. Thanks, appreciate your patience with me.

[Duffy Pratt]

As I understand it, Lightroom is good at making global adjustments to a picture, and at organizing pictures. It can't do selections, channel based adjustments, anything that relies on layers or layer masks, or stitching pictures together.

So, if the change you want to do is the sort of thing that could be done by issuing global edition instructions to the picture, Lightroom would probably be able to do it. If it involves direct or selective manipulation of a group of pixels, you probably need Photoshop.

Also, on the picture editing side, Photoshop can do everything that Lightroom does. There are some sorts of batch operations that are easier in Lightroom, but in every other respect, PS is the equal or superior of Lightroom when it comes to editing. Lightroom may be better than Bridge for managing pictures. It probably is, but I don't have any experience with that side of it.

Duffy

[picman]

Heard at a seminar:
"Photoshop is a very good plug-in for Lightroom"

Somewhat tongue in cheek, but true.

[picasso]

Photoshop can do just about everything light room can do plus much much more but lightroom can not do everything photoshop can do.

Simply put Light Room was built for individuals that wanted to be able to develop their images and do nothing else with them. Photoshop which includes Adobe Camera Raw does the development plus allows you much more creativity by using layers, layer masking, blending modes as well as allows you to use plug-ins from third party vendors to further enhance your photographs.

Photoshop is the best of both world and still rules in my opionion. That being said. I use both of them.

Also, if you want to do Panoramic s Photoshop can merge the files for you.

Paul

[picasso]

Originally Posted by picman

Heard at a seminar:
"Photoshop is a very good plug-in for Lightroom"

Somewhat tongue in cheek, but true.

I would say that Light Room is a very good plug in for Photo shop. Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge which both come with Photoshop can do about 90% of what Light Room can. Light Room can only do about 10% of what you can do with Photoshop.


Paul

[wondershots]

I use both also. However, with some purchased and free "presets" for Lightroom I think about 80% of my shots never see Photoshop. The ones I do process in CS3 are ones that I want to run MyKey's Finding Color actions on.

[Gordon]

Lightroom is head and shoulders above photoshop for selecting, picking, choosing and colour correcting images. It has a few good features for fixing blemishes/ dust spots, but nothing much else for doing localised image changes.

Photoshop is head and shoulders above lightroom for selecting, picking, choosing and manipulating bits of images.

Lightroom is designed for photographers to finish off already good images and get them out the door, looking great, quickly.

Photoshop is a manipulators dream darkroom. Once you've picked the one image you want to work on, Photoshop is the perfect swiss army knife.

Bridge in photoshop is kinda crappy for managing, selecting, showing images, particularly once you find out what lightroom can do. Adobe Camera Raw is an okay RAW converter, again a pale shadow of what lightroom can do.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by picman

Heard at a seminar:
"Photoshop is a very good plug-in for Lightroom".

That's basically how I use it. Very few of my images need photoshop work the way I'm using them now. Lightroom gets me through my images, to the final output, much faster than was ever possible in bridge/ photoshop. It is a huge advance over bridge/ ACR/ photoshop, in terms of workflow. There's ways in bridge/ACR/ photoshop to do all the things you can do in Lightroom, if you like jumping through needless hoops or pressing more keys than you need to, or taking longer opening up various programs.

[jeffkohn]

That's basically how I use it. Very few of my images need photoshop work the way I'm using them now. Lightroom gets me through my images, to the final output, much faster than was ever possible in bridge/ photoshop. It is a huge advance over bridge/ ACR/ photoshop, in terms of workflow. There's ways in bridge/ACR/ photoshop to do all the things you can do in Lightroom, if you like jumping through needless hoops or pressing more keys than you need to, or taking longer opening up various programs.

This puzzles me, at least with respect to CS3 where Bridge got a major overhaul and is much more useable now. I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something that LR can do, or if other people haven't taken a closer look at the latest version of Bridge.

Part of it may be that I'm not a high-volume shooter and every keeper is going to get at least some attention on Photoshop. I also dislike the way LR tries to hide the filesystem with it's database paradigm (way too Mac-like for me).

[picasso]

At first I agreed with Gordon but when I started playing with the new Adobe Camera Raw coupled with the things I already new about Photoshop, Light Room just seems like a dumbed down version of Photoshop. No offense intended to anyone but I always find myself going into Photoshop for something whether its to add an effect to an image or to run an action or a plug-in. Not to mention there is no masking available in Light Room which to me is its drawbackl. I can adjust an image but if I want to bump up just the eye color or just on thing you can't do it in light room. So, you end up over in Photoshop anyway. I do agree with Light Room being better than Bridge.

It probably also a question of more on how you shoot and process. Like Gordon said. If you just take things out of the camera and tweak them just a bit Light Room may be all you need. Also if you are doing hundreds of images at a time such as from a wedding I can see where Light Room would be of value over Photoshop.

Paul

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

This puzzles me, at least with respect to CS3 where Bridge got a major overhaul and is much more useable now. I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something that LR can do, or if other people haven't taken a closer look at the latest version of Bridge.

I haven't spent much time with the CS3 bridge, so it could well be I'm missing the improvments. But I assume you still need to open photoshop up to get a final resized JPEG, from bridge, through ACR and out ?

The main thing I like about lightroom is that I can so quickly go through a selection process. can you assign ratings in bridge with a single key press ? I used to hate having to hit Ctrl+<number> to rate an image. that and the side by side comparision of 2 to n images.

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

Part of it may be that I'm not a high-volume shooter and every keeper is going to get at least some attention on Photoshop. I also dislike the way LR tries to hide the filesystem with it's database paradigm (way too Mac-like for me).

I shoot a lot, but I don't finish/ show/ share many images. Lightroom works well for getting through that process. All my keepers get some attention, but they very rarely need much in the way of localised/ spot changes, other than selective colour and lightroom handles that better than photoshop does. The conversion to B&W is much more intuiative in lightroom for example. As is selective hue/ saturation adjustments - tap on the colour in the image you want to change (I like doing that on a large tablet) then just drag/ draw in a direction to change the colour, saturation or tonality if it is a B&W. I haven't seen anything in photoshop that can match that in terms of flexibility and power. Again, you can do all these things in photoshop, it just gets in the way more often.

So I think you are right, if you only shoot a handful of shots and maybe want to pick out one or two, then photoshop is fantastic. If you shoot a lot and want to edit that down to a small selection, lightroom is a faster option, I've found. I suspect if you were in the wedding business and shot a lot and needed to get a lot out of the door quickly, lightroom would be even better. There's a reason I have a 1DII and that's that I like to shoot a lot on each opportunity. Lightroom helps me deal with that affliction :)

I also like being able to throw a slideshow up at any time and do all of this selection/ picking on a full screen mode while the slideshow plays.

Lightroom is just far more image-centric and workflow-centric than photoshop ever was or likely will be. Photoshop is much more single image focused.

Also I switched off the database centric aspects very early on, it treats my filesystem like a filesystem and doesn't move images around. I know where stuff is and it stays there.

[keefeborden]

You mentioned the need to process landscape photos in panoramic fashion as well as using multiple images with different exposures. Photoshop CS3 has those features, and I'm not sure that Lightroom does....The panoramic feature in CS3 is improved over its predecessors and I think works well enough. The HDR feature in Photoshop is (in my opinion) underwhelming. I've tried it a few times for landscapes and am not really that impressed. It's better than nothing, however.

At the risk of confusing the overall picture a little further, I have heard a lot of great comments about Photomatix, a program which does HDR files. I haven't tried it, so I can't give you any firsthand information on it.

I hope this helps...Keefe.

[Gordon]

the good thing is, you can get free 30 day trial versions of both lightroom and photoshop CS3. Grab a copy of each and see which does what you want/ need/ like.

[jeffkohn]

I haven't spent much time with the CS3 bridge, so it could well be I'm missing the improvments. But I assume you still need to open photoshop up to get a final resized JPEG, from bridge, through ACR and out ?

You can batch save to any number of formats either from within ACR (no PS), or from Bridge using Image Processor. Image Processor opens PS to do its work, but it requires no manual intervention from the user and I don't see it as a big deal at all. The nice thing about using Image Processor is that before saving the JPEG/TIFF/PSD you can have it run an action on each image.

The main thing I like about lightroom is that I can so quickly go through a selection process. can you assign ratings in bridge with a single key press ? I used to hate having to hit Ctrl+<number> to rate an image.

By default it's still Ctrl+<number> but you can change it to just <number> in Preferences. And if you're in a slideshow it's just <number>.

that and the side by side comparision of 2 to n images.

Bridge can't do the side-by-side comparison. I used to think that was an attractive feature in Lightroom until I realized you couldn't zoom in on the side-by-side images. So it would be useless for me if I want to judge sharpness/focus. What Bridge _can_ do zoom to 100% while in slideshow, giving you a high quality preview just like LR. And while you're zoomed in, you can move from image to image, keeping your zoom and relative position so that you can compare shots at 100%.

Even when I come back from a longer trip with a couple thousand images, I don't find the tagging and selection process to be at all problematic with Bridge CS3. I guess it just depends on what you know and are comfortable with.

[Collins]

I took a peak in Bridge CS3 and found most of the editing features (all?) I love in Lightroom are available in Bridge CS3. However, Bridge doesn't have the same degree of cataloging, filtering, etc. controls that Lightroom does. Lightroom also provides for making multiple versions of the same image (one in color, one in b&w, one cross-processed, for example) so you can compare and see which one you like more.

In general, Lightroom is great software to both organize your image collection AND apply edits (esp in bulk). Bridge is great for the corrections, but not so much for the organization.