Lightroom / Photoshop / Elements

JDPrism

JDPrism

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Name
Jan
Edit My Images
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I have been using the free software supplied with the purchase of my Canon camera for photo editing but found it very limiting. What is the difference between Lightroom / Photoshop and Elements.
I do not want to subscribe to Creative Cloud at all. It seems that LR 6 is capable of all I will need.
 
Download the trial version of LR6 and see if it does all you need.
 
Thanks for the advice. I will certainly go the trial version route as long as I don't get pestered too much by Adobe into buying.
 
Well then don't buy it. Heaven forbid a commercial organisation is trying to invite you to buy their software, especially so when you are trying it out b

Light room is great to catalogue your negatives. It is even better if you shoot in raw. It should do everything a photographer would want unless you are into heavy photo manipulation.
 
Lightroom lets you "Develop" images and, by and large, has a toolset you'd expect to find in a darkroom. Global changes, gradients, and the ability to paint exposure and some moderate corrections in a reasonable but not particularly fine level of detail.

Photoshop is, well, photoshop, and allows meddling with everything on a pixel level. Literally everything, in a multitude of colour spaces and modes. Think of it as the airbrush, box of paints, pencils, inks, scalpels and glue.

Because of this, though, a lot of people consider Photoshop "Over the top" when it comes to the needs of the majority. Depending on what you want to do, you may find you need more editing tools than are provided in LR - I know I couldn't get by without Photoshop for the kind of work that I do, your mileage may vary!
 
Thanks for your short and to the point explanation Denyer, I think I need to choose between Lightroom and Elements. I am only a hobby photographer and am not looking to create any special effects. It will be for lightening or darkening, straightening the horizon, cropping. and converting from Raw etc.
 
There you go then, as said before Lightroom will be perfect for you...
 
Which is what exactly?
 
They compliment each other really, Lightroom is great for the basic bulk editing, and photoshop/elements is great for the clever stuff like combining images together, swopping heads etc, thats stuff Lightroom cant do.
 
Swopping heads? I guess its me, never had the need for such intrusive edits. But granted if that is a regular occurrence than that is beyond lightroom. I would focus on getting it right in camera. :p
 
Personally I use a bit of both Lightroom and Photoshop depending on what I'm actually doing. I bought the Creative Cloud Photography edition which is pretty good value at £8 a month or something. I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't more money anyway.
 
dejongj said:
Swopping heads? I guess its me, never had the need for such intrusive edits. But granted if that is a regular occurrence than that is beyond lightroom. I would focus on getting it right in camera. :p
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It's an example, not a legal requirement, and it's down to a persons creativity, I might not swop heads every day either, but I'll often add or remove objects or combine several images, something you can't do in lightroom.
 
swanseamale47 said:
They compliment each other really, Lightroom is great for the basic bulk editing, and photoshop/elements is great for the clever stuff like combining images together, swopping heads etc, thats stuff Lightroom cant do.
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Thanks for your reply. If I understand correctly then in my case it would be more beneficial to have elements since I will not be doing any bulk edits and that LR will hardly be used. I have Elements 13 on trail and it seems to be enough for me at the moment.
 
JDPrism said:
If I understand correctly then in my case it would be more beneficial to have elements since I will not be doing any bulk edits and that LR will hardly be used.
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If you shoot raw then you will find that LR is much better than PSE. If you shoot jpeg then it doesn't really matter what you use to edit the 25% of the data remaining after you've dumped 75% of what your camera captured.
 
For a normal,photographer who doesn't want to chop up their photos I'd say lightroom is the much better tool. It has great organisation, non destructive editing, can do single edits as well, super powerful brushes and effects. Basically anything make make your photos sparkle and ability to find them. But fair enough if you want to "shop" and fake photos then there are complimentary products.

Why not just get a full CC subscription and then you've got it all. Alternatively I would use LR and for those few photos you want to fake and chop, change and combine use a free product like gimp to supplement lightroom.
 
dejongj said:
For a normal,photographer who doesn't want to chop up their photos I'd say lightroom is the much better tool. It has great organisation, non destructive editing, can do single edits as well, super powerful brushes and effects. Basically anything make make your photos sparkle and ability to find them. But fair enough if you want to "shop" and fake photos then there are complimentary products.

Why not just get a full CC subscription and then you've got it all. Alternatively I would use LR and for those few photos you want to fake and chop, change and combine use a free product like gimp to supplement lightroom.
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It's not about faking, I often need to make up theatre or film posters, I'll have to cut out parts of images, I might just need a gravestone for a murder mystery, or even create shapes and reflections for product photography.
Oh yes and photoshop can non destructive editing as well, you just have to know how to use it properly. ;)
 
Dave in Wales said:
I love LR5....however what really gets up my nose is all this 'importing' and 'exporting' nonsense.
And.....Resizing has to be done during exporting, not at the editing stage.
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This is one of the best things about Lightroom's system. Saves heaps of storage space, and keeps filesystems much tidier without the need for numerous duplicates.
 
swanseamale47 said:
It's not about faking, I often need to make up theatre or film posters, I'll have to cut out parts of images, I might just need a gravestone for a murder mystery, or even create shapes and reflections for product photography.
Oh yes and photoshop can non destructive editing as well, you just have to know how to use it properly. ;)
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Which is faking it ;) don't forget we are talking about a hobbyist photographer her, not a graphic designer or desktop publisher making posters all the time.

I can totally see that for you there is a need. Hey I've got the full suite including all the video stuff as well. But our needs are all different.
 
Dave in Wales said:
I love LR5....however what really gets up my nose is all this 'importing' and 'exporting' nonsense.
And.....Resizing has to be done during exporting, not at the editing stage.

Whereas with PSE, the file is simply opened from ones 'pictures' folder and saved back to it.

Some may find this interesting also....https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/love-lr5-but-miss-elements-stroke-outline.589846/
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I don't understand what you mean. Surely you need to import your photos? You only have to do that once...
 
Thanks for all the replies. After playing around with the trail version of Elements 13 I have decided that it is more than good enough for my limited skills. If I need to bulk convert from raw to jpeg I will use DPP.
 
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