Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Elements

[nutsnbolts]

Ok, I know how to use Photoshop well enough to make photo adjustments, however, as powerful as Photoshop may be, after downloading Lightroom, I can see how, if I was to edit "develop/recompose" pictures, it's much easier in Lightroom. Of course, you can't make fancy borders or anything like that but it's simplicity at it's finest.

On the other hand, Adobe Elements? What is it used for? I know for photo editing as well but difference between Elements/Lightroom? Other than the obvious differences.

[FlyingPhotog]

I'm a very new user of LR and CS3 but I'll give you my $0.02 worth. I'm sure das experten can illuminate further.

LR is (as I'm discovering) a very powerful library/cataloging system, with an ability to make simple adjustments and then "publish" that image (back to disk, the web, printer or email...) IMO, if you got it 95% right when you shot it, LR is great all by itself.

CS3 (PS10?) is for the hard-core fixes / effects jobs (but you can still catalog your efforts using Light Room.)

Between the two, the work is seamless. IOW, you won't see any adjustments you've made to an image if you only look at it in the LR library. Pop it into Light Room's Develop area or export it to CS3 and any chagnes you had already made (Crop, Color, etc...) magically appear. They call this "non destructive editing" where your originals always stay intact (unless you choose to edit the original...whcih you can do if you want.)

Elements (and I only used up through v4) takes a little of both LR and PS and combines them into one program. There is a catalog where you can catagorize and keyword your shots and then there is an editing module for making adjustments. You have to conciously choose to do a "Save As" so that you don't alter the original where in LR/CS3, you are simply saving different versions of your adjustments without dicking up the original.

I'll say this however: Light Room and CS3 are resource-hungry programs. I'm currently working on a 4+ yr old AMD 2100+ with only 1Gb of RAM and things are marginal at best. LR is slow and methodical and CS3 will only run if I flush the cache after each tweak otherwise, it crashes relentlessly. I'm already talking to my local custom PC shop about building a 2.13 Mhz Dual Core system with 4Gb of 533Mhz DDR RAM and a 256Gb Dual-Head video card.

Elements 4, on the other hand, runs just fine on my current (ancient) machine and positively screams on my Dell Inspiron 1405 laptop. Canon RAW, psd, jpg, tif, whatever, will open almost instantly.

Personally, I popped for the LR/CS3 combo for the seamless workflow but Elements would work just fine for someone who wants an "all together" solution but doesn't need the bells and whistles you get with full up Photoshop.

Hope my meager thoughts are in some way helpful.

Good Luck with your decision making.

[davidcrebelxt]

I think FlyingPhotog gave a pretty good assessment.

I might add that while LR's organizer is more powerful than Elements... it is harder to actually use as far as finding photos (To do an "AND" search you must type both words into the dialog box... in Elements you just clicked the checkboxes next to the keywords.)

I use LR and Elements. As you noted, LR can't do the fancy borders, plugins, layers, selective edits, etc. So after taking image as far as it can go in LR, I'll switch over to Elements IF I want to do more. However I find myself going into Elements less than I had imagined.

Also, Elements Camera RAW is bare-bones... LR, and CS3's ACR is much more powerful.

[nutsnbolts]

I guess the reasoning for this post is to eliminate redundancy in programs. As I have stated or not stated, I have used Photoshop for several years and know what to use Photoshop for, however, for photos, well, I used to resort to ACDSEE just it's simple to correct red eye, exposure, etc. However, I don't really "recompose" my photos.

After getting the DSLR, I got sucked in on finding out people recomposing their photos, using one or a combination of programs. I guess, I will try out Elements. I do like LR because it's pretty straight forward. Photoshop needs a learning curve but I know pretty much how to manipulate it to do what LR can do (in terms of editing), Elements..hmm..I should definately check it out.

[Familiaphoto]

It all depends on what you need. I use PSE5 as it meets all my needs and saves me a lot of money. The RAW tool is the same as in CS3 and does a good job. You can work with layer, filter, etc. The organizer is not as powerful as Lightroom and I do like many of the things Lightroom does but it does not meet all my needs and the things it does extra are just gravy. I can't justify what it does for the price, given my needs at this time.

My advice is this, try out the trial version of Lightroom, then you'll know where you stand. While the cataloging is awesome it lacks a real sharpening tool and you will still need CS3 or PSE to do work in layers if you want to. However, from what I've seen, it should meet 95%+ of your needs.

Good luck.

[ifonline]

Lightroom can do fancy borders, actually, with a bit of ingenuity. Check here--> http://seanmcfoto.com/lightroom/2007/02/making-and-using-borders-in-print.html