lightroom vs CS3

[lsarmiento]

This may be a dumb question,:oops: but can someone explain the differences and/or benefits of lightroom vs photoshop cs3?

Thanks!

[broadcast_techie]

On a very basic level, Lightroom is great for photo management / workflow and Photoshop is for advanced picture editing.
They are different products for different needs, if you want to manage your photos and do photo correction then Lightroom is for you, if you want to edit your photos to a deep level then Photoshop is for you.
Both have 30 day demos from Adobe so the best thing is to have a play and see what suits you best.
Personally I use both.

Kristan

[Irreverent]

To echo a lot of what Kristan has already said, in an ideal world one would have both, but if it were a choice between one or the other, you need to examine your general photography needs.

Lightroom acts as a wonderful librarian for your images, and allows you to fine tune and optimise your RAW files in a very impressive number of ways. In some ways, its image processing options are more immediate and flexible than those found in the main body of the CS3 application.

However, there are certain things that Lightroom simply cannot do that Photoshop excels at. These usually involve advanced image editing functions, and it affords you exhaustive control over your images (provided you have the energy and the discipline to truly come to terms with this incredibly deep application)

The good news is that CS3, while huge, is designed to apeal to a very broad market, from Graphic Designers, to Web Designers, to Photographers, to Medical Imaging and Image Forensics specialists, so as a photographer you will not need to know what every function or tool does in order to have great success.

On the other hand, Lightroom was designed squarely with photographers in mind, and is developed on a concept of a simple straightforward workflow that takes you from getting your pictures off camera and into print or onto the web with as little fuss and as much flexibility as possible.

I could no longer live without Photoshop as I'm just so used to it, but in my short time with Lightroom I am rapidly starting to feel the same way.

On balance, I believe if I were starting out right now, I would begin with Lightroom and add Photoshop at a later point when I had finally explored the full depths of what I was capable of with Lightroom.

[Shanna]

Can you eye pop in lightroom? I have no editing skills and only iphoto on my new mac.

[Irreverent]

If by eye pop you mean selective brightening of just the eyes (as opposed to red eye removal) then no - all the adjusments you make to an image in Lightroom are applied across the whole image (with the exception of red eye removal and spot healing).

To do that would require another application.

However, Lightroom + Photoshop Elements may well make a killer beginner's combo.

[LeeSC]

I actually have and use both. You can get away with one or the other in a pinch.

Adobe Bridge/ACR will perform most of the functions LR does so you could get away with just using these combined with CS3.

Another option, if you don't do a lot of heavy processing (i.e layers) is to go LR and then use either Elements or something free like GIMP.

[lsarmiento]

thanks so much for your answers. I'm familiar with photoshop, as I use it for work, but not for photo pp. But I keep reading (mostly on this site) about lightroom. I can do one or the other right now, financially, but I can't do both in one shot.

Here's another one in the same line. How much of what you can do in photoshop can you do with Elements?

Thanks again! :)

[René Damkot]

Can you eye pop in lightroom? I have no editing skills and only iphoto on my new mac.

If you wait a few weeks, LR 2 will come out, which features localised adjustments. That could be used for things like that.