CS3 or Lightroom

[smoothassilk]

If I have CS3 do I need lightroom too? What will lightroom do that CS3 want?

[PIC]

Originally Posted by smoothassilk

If I have CS3 do I need lightroom too? What will lightroom do that CS3 wont?

Add to Adobe profits ??

EL

[Dakinetx]

CS3 is WAY more intense. It can do everything.
Thus far LR is made more for the Digital Photography who just wants to "process" photos rather than "edit" them, kinda.
Basically LR is a GREAT program that makes the "tweaking" much quicker (IMO) but in no way has the tools/power of CS3 for bigger editing.
Often I have "tweaked" in LR, sent pic over to CS3, done more editing, and "save" which creates a copy back in LR :)

[Hogleg 44]

For me, Lightroom is a Raw Converter with a lot of extra adjustment abilities.
This will allow the user to make many 'fine tunes' to a Raw image within LR, so that further post processing with another editor is not necessary.
There is a big price difference between the two. So.
If you shoot RAW, LR is great. If you don't shoot raw, go CS3.
If shoot Raw, and can't afford both...go CS3.

[mdparthum]

I am not sure which is best, but CS3 helps me do graphics for my webpage and also edit photos. So, I can use the same application for what I need and therefore become more comfortable with its abilities.

My suggestion is to download a trial version of both and play with them for a month and decide which one you like. Scott Kelby wrote a wonderful book on Photoshop CS2 and CS3 and he might have one for Lightroom, but give those a looksee at the bookstore. Dave Cross also has written a good book as well for Photoshop.

Try them out! Sorry if you already knew this stuff.

[Rson]

Originally Posted by Hogleg 44

For me, Lightroom is a Raw Converter with a lot of extra adjustment abilities.
This will allow the user to make many 'fine tunes' to a Raw image within LR, so that further post processing with another editor is not necessary.
There is a big price difference between the two. So.
If you shoot RAW, LR is great. If you don't shoot raw, go CS3.
If shoot Raw, and can't afford both...go CS3.

Get the trial for lightroom, you will love the ease of developing pics and making corrections. It also has cropping, spot correction, and side by side comparison or before and after.

I love the free plug ins from Onone for lightroom.

[carrbowl]

I have both and am by not means good at either. I find LR good for getting the colors, white balance, those sorts of things in order and you can do many photos all at once. Correct one photo and "sync" all the rest of the photos. I use CS3 for more skin type issues, cloning kinds of things.

I think it depends on what type of photos you take.

[smoothassilk]

Thanks for the information, I'm going to download the trail version and try it.

[dspeed]

Mark -

Before Lightroom, I did a lot to my images in PShop. Since LR 1.0 was released, I have moved to doing 80% in LR and the rest in PS.

LR is designed for the digital (or film, using scanned images) photographer; it is built to make the workflow, well, *flow*. It is superior to PS in this respect, IMHO.

I suspect that most people who do LR / PS seriously shoot in RAW. It's a distinct advantage giving you a much wider range of exposure/color/sharpness change is possible. (I must admit that I'm surprised at how well the little computer in the camera usually does at making the decisions to make a jpeg.)

LR starts out giving you a lightbox view of the imported images to quickly sort through things and index them. Nobody has covered the DAM (Digital Asset Management) aspect of LR yet. I find this Library function absolutely essential. You can organize and index the images in a number of ways. Backups become easy as well. And finding images becomes reasonable.

Phase 2 is Develop where preprogrammed or individual adjustments can be applied. Please note that minimal editing is possible in Ver 1.x (the 2.0 beta has a lot more options here...) - cropping, spot removal and red eye reduction are about it, but this does it for most of my images. An important thing to remember here is that the LR changes are non-destructive; your original image remains. This is where I export the edited RAW images as jpegs (other options available) for other purposes.

The third part is the Slideshow function which may or may not be important to you. I haven't done much in this arena in LR, tho I did use this functionality in PS a few years back when I ran my own web site (and may need it again). Pretty flexible (as is*everyting* in LR) you can use presets or roll your own.

The fourth element is the Print function. I find this part to do a credible job for my typical 8x10 images on my HP B9180; I don't recall offhand having to go to PShop to print. You do need to watch for 'sticky' settings.

The only things that I don't do in LR 1.x are panoramas and extensive editing.

Both packages are great. I've used PShop for years and never *really* pushed it. I'd say the PShop learning curve is much steeper for a photographer, but the effort to use Lightroom well is not trivial. There are lots of tutorials/blogs for learning.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[skygod]

I have both Lightroom and CS3. They work well together but if I could only afford Lightroom and if I could only have one program I would pick Lightroom as it enables me to work efficiently to edit, print and organize my photos. I started with the beta when it first came out and after doing as many of the free tutorials I realized I could not do without it. IMHO it is money well spent.
Check out Lightroom Killer Tips.
http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/

[Damon]

Lightroom is great for keeping virtual photo albums and portfolios, and for adding watermarks and editing metadata on the fly.

Photoshop still gets the nod for editing. Lightroom is more of a companion to photoshop than a replacement. If you have photoshop, you don't need Lightroom, but it sure helps.

[Gordon]

I've used photoshop for about 10 years. Since lightroom I hardly ever bother using photoshop. I use it for very occasional editing that I can't do in Lightroom (though that's changing with the next release), but 95% of the photos I take, Lightroom is all I need to finish them.

[snidow]

I recently started using lightroom 2.0 beta and as other have stated most of my processing is now done primary in LR and I'm just starting out with it. I love it, I just need to learn more on how to use it.

[barP]

there have been many threads on this subject...

i use both, and i think it comes down to this: cs3 is for many layers, lightroom is for many images.

wp.