Adobe RAW Image Editors

No they are all the same for CONVERTING a raw image as they all use the same Adobe engine.
Lightroom and Photoshop both use the same Adobe Camera Raw, engine.


As for editing an image, of the Adobe products Photoshop is the best image EDITOR.

The best raw converter is DPP and you have free.

There are lessons online about how to use. It really is fantastic. When you are using Canon lenses it will correct for distortion, CA and colour blur.

Nifty Fifty wrote in post #12239920
Since I have received so much advice to start shooting RAW, I am going to start doing it now. My question is: what is a good RAW image editor?

I am a little confused because there seems to be a few different Adobe products for this like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Camera Raw. I know there are other ones out there too, but as for Adobe products, are any of these actually "better" for editing RAW images?

Any help is appreciated!

Don't rush into this, the world of Raw processing does have a different "take" from the "normal" jpeg workflow. Not huge, but it does have things to absorb.

As to Adobe products, there is on Raw processor shared by Photoshop CSx, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. The difference is in the individual "packages" and how they fit into someone's workflow. "Standard" Photoshop CSx "has it all" at a price and a lot of complexity. Elements has a "trimmed down" version of the Raw processor and the image editor but offers a quicker/easier toolset and learning curve. Lightroom has the full-featured Raw processor but was designed as an integrated "workflow interface" for photographers do do all their common tasks efficiently, but note that Lightroom has no "image editor" such as Photoshop CSx and Elements have -- it's common and eventually pretty important for a Lightroom user to get at least Elements on board as well.

But, for now, what type of editing software do you have to work with your jpegs? If you find it adequate for that, then an excellent starting point for learning about Raw is the Canon Raw processing software that comes with our cameras Digital Photo Professional (DPP). It is not only very capable at producing images from your Raw photos, but also has some very cool features that make it quick to get started and to get a feel of the power of Raw processing without getting "lost" in the process.

tonylong wrote in post #12241499
Don't rush into this, the world of Raw processing does have a different "take" from the "normal" jpeg workflow. Not huge, but it does have things to absorb.

This is great advice. Contrary to your title, there are lots of very good RAW converters that are not a product of Adobe. For instance, I use Phase One's Capture One Pro which I feel is a great product but it doesn't coe cheap. Whether you are talking Photoshop or Lightroom the converter is identical, they both use the same RAW engine with simply the user interface is prettied up in Lightroom.

I would take Tony's advice and download some that you want to try. They all have trial periods where you can try before you buy.

DPP is free. Cut your teeth on RAW with that. (I'm assuming you're shooting Canon)

http://www.video.bhpho​tovideo.com …f1bee3836e657f&​rf=sitemap

You can check out the video link above on B&H to get an idea of the software. It's for an older version 3.4 (latest is 3.9, I believe), but you'll get the gist of it. There's a version that cuts it to 3 parts rather than the whole 100 plus minutes the link shows.

Eventually, you may want/need more editing capabilities... then look at LR, Aperture, Photoshop, etc.