RAW Processor: ACR vs. Lightroom

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the strengths & weaknesses of LR vs. PS/PSE. Since a lot of us rely on Adobe Camera Raw, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the RAW processor in LR compared to ACR.

Thank you.

I believe they both use ACR as their conversion tool. I use LR after using PSE for a while. I really like LR in comparison as the workflow is much easier and seems less resource intensive.

kitjv wrote in post #14345986
There has been a lot of discussion regarding the strengths & weaknesses of LR vs. PS/PSE. Since a lot of us rely on Adobe Camera Raw, I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the RAW processor in LR compared to ACR.

Thank you.

Heh! When you mention "a lot of discussion" have you actually read many discussions? It gets repeated over and over here that LR and ACR share the same processing engine with the same tools, assuming your versions of LR and ACR are "equivalent"! At this point you will need Photoshop CS6 to get the full features that you get in LR4, but once CS6 gets out of Beta, same ol' same ol'!

TTuna Eye wrote in post #14346188
I believe they both use ACR as their conversion tool. I use LR after using PSE for a while. I really like LR in comparison as the workflow is much easier and seems less resource intensive.

Although this goes beyond what the OP seems to be asking about, it is still the relevant matter as to why so many people prefer to do their work in Lightroom even if they have Photoshop -- Lightroom was designed to be an efficient workflow manager built around the Camera Raw processor, and for many of us it indeed does that very well!

Be it as it may .... I was unaware of the fact that ACR & the RAW processor in LR are identical. The reason I ask is that in PSE8 (at least my copy) the full version of ACR is "hidden" in Adobe Bridge. That apparently is not the case in subsequent versions of PSE.

I discovered that the version of ACR (5.7) in PSE8 does not support the Canon 60D -- well, that is unless I convert the CR2 files to DNG. Not a problem; just a hassle.

LR just might be a bit more seamless to work with.

Thank you kindly.

It depends on your platform. The Mac version of PSE includes Adobe Bridge as its front-end viewer and the full version of ACR. The PC version of PSE differs; it has its own viewer/browser called Organizer and many of the batch-processing functions in ACR are disabled.

kitjv wrote in post #14347266
Be it as it may .... I was unaware of the fact that ACR & the RAW processor in LR are identical. The reason I ask is that in PSE8 (at least my copy) the full version of ACR is "hidden" in Adobe Bridge. That apparently is not the case in subsequent versions of PSE.

I discovered that the version of ACR (5.7) in PSE8 does not support the Canon 60D -- well, that is unless I convert the CR2 files to DNG. Not a problem; just a hassle.

LR just might be a bit more seamless to work with.

Thank you kindly.

Have you tried the normal upgrades that you're entitled to?

Adobe added support for the 60D in ACR 6.2:

http://www.adobe.com …ads/detail.jsp?​ftpID=4806

So, you may want to look at upgrading Elements to PSE 10.

But, as you say, the Elements version of Camera Raw is "stripped down" and so yes, Lightroom would have the full-featured Raw processor. As you say, the alternative of using the full Photoshop is, well a nice but spendy route.

The raw processing engine is the same, but the interface to it is different. To say I'm not a fan of Lightroom would be a massive understatement.