Photoshop or Lightroom?

[Shar2]

I'm looking at buying a photo editing suite and wondered which of these would be most suitable for an intermediate beginner in photography. I take mainly aviation and landscape photos but am trying out some ideas with nudes.

[beano500]

Trying not to read the second sentence....


They do different things.

Lightroom would be my choice.

Try the beta first - available if you search on the Adobe site.

Photoshop - go for Elements not the whole shebang - if you must.

Whichever, be prepared for a learning curve!

[Shar2]

Thanks, sorry if the aviation and landscapes put you off the second sentance Will have a shufty at the Adobe site.

[4hero]

Both, they complement eachother beautifully

[cirks]

4hero said:

Both, they complement eachother beautifully

What, aviation and nudes?

[Shar2]

cirks said:

4hero said:

Both, they complement eachother beautifully

What, aviation and nudes?

Now there's an idea.

[Fordo]

Lightroom = digital dark room. Perfect for tweaking photos, correcting exposure, playing with levels, aligning a wonky horizon, removing blemishes + great for batch processing and also storing photos.


photoshop = for heavy photo editing - compositing multiple images, heavy airbrushing / blemish removal. It much more for photo manipulation.



I use aperture (very similar for lightroom) for 90% of my photos. They load off camera into aperture. in aperture, i tweak the photos as necessary - colour, contrast, maybe a crop here and there. Maybe i'll play about with black and white- its my digital darkroom

I only use photoshop when im compositing something- using a sky from one photo on the sky of another, or if i need to correct barrell distortion, or do some photo stitching, or when i want to remove that sheep from the background. that kind of thing.


hope that helps

[muppetdave]

Already been done...


And I'd vote for both too

[RobDickinson]

I keep trying LR, keep not getting on with its catalog managment and workflow.

I usualy use CS4 (which is probably overkill) and mostly only work small numbers of pics. I do use LR if I have to proecss a larger set.

[muppetdave]

RobDickinson said:

I keep trying LR, keep not getting on with its catalog managment and workflow.

I usualy use CS4 (which is probably overkill) and mostly only work small numbers of pics. I do use LR if I have to proecss a larger set.

There was a discussion about this the other week. I'm not great with any of these programs (or taking pictures in the first place for that matter), but I persevered with LR and now find it really really useful and only refer back to PS for more detailed work.