Photoshop or Lightroom for Student?

Photoshop does HDR but its rather subtle compare to what Photomatix does.

tonylong wrote in post #15665605
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But the student discounts do make CS look attractive. The one issue is that getting the "CS6 Extended Package" leaves you "stuck" with that package for future upgrades. However, I'm not a student and so I don't know what the "real world effect" of this is. Hopefully some with experience can chime in!
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This is something that really needs to be stressed. I used my student discount to get CS4 Design Premium. While it came at a great price, I couldn't upgrade Ps by itself. You can only upgrade the entire suite. Without a student discount this gets expensive, especially since I only use Lr and Ps. This meant when it came time to upgrade I had to buy CS6 outright.
My personal recommendation would be to try and get both CS6 and Lr if you can swing it. If not I'd go with Lr and Elements. You can do a lot with Lr from an editing standpoint, but I honestly couldn't imagine trying to work without Lr for image management. It just makes life so much easier. Meanwhile if you get both programs you can get up to speed a lot faster with Lr and then take your time learning the intricacies of Ps.

Ok, thanks everyone. I'm starting to get a clearer picture (pun intended) of what I think would be best. Starting off, Lightroom sounds like my best bet because it will get me started learning basic usage, and will still be useful if I decide to move on to cs6. I don't intend to do major processing right away. Saturation, sharpness, those kinds of things which Lightroom sounds like it will handle perfectly.

As others suggested, I'll download the LR trial tomorrow to see what's up.

Thanks for the info!
Tyler

Someone else mentioned it already too, but if you are interested in HDR look at Photomatix. It is the best HDR software IMO and it integrates with LR very well. There is also Nik Software's HDR Effex Pro which is solid as well.

If you're a student give careful consideration to the Creative Cloud discount they're running right now. $20/month for a year and you get access to EVERYTHING.

The "gotcha" is that the pricing expires in a year. But here's the rub -- Adobe's upgrade cycling policies mean that you either abandon upgrades ENTIRELY or you're paying every 2 years or so -- otherwise you get hosed as the discounts don't apply more than one rev back in full (you get a roughly half-discount two revs back and ZERO beyond that.)

I'm not usually a cloud person and find the premise of renting software like this offensive, but in this case the price is reasonable IF you're a student, especially when you consider that you get the entire Adobe shooting match for the year.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #15667220
This is something that really needs to be stressed. I used my student discount to get CS4 Design Premium. While it came at a great price, I couldn't upgrade Ps by itself. You can only upgrade the entire suite. Without a student discount this gets expensive, especially since I only use Lr and Ps. This meant when it came time to upgrade I had to buy CS6 outright.
My personal recommendation would be to try and get both CS6 and Lr if you can swing it. If not I'd go with Lr and Elements. You can do a lot with Lr from an editing standpoint, but I honestly couldn't imagine trying to work without Lr for image management. It just makes life so much easier. Meanwhile if you get both programs you can get up to speed a lot faster with Lr and then take your time learning the intricacies of Ps.

I think recommending a combo of LR and Elements is really great advice.

Bob_A wrote in post #15669968
I think recommending a combo of LR and Elements is really great advice.

Yup, it's what I recommend, student or not.

98% of what I need to do can be done with Lightroom. 99% of the remainder can be done with CS6, 98.9% can be done with PSE.

tickerguy wrote in post #15668734
If you're a student give careful consideration to the Creative Cloud discount they're running right now. $20/month for a year and you get access to EVERYTHING.

The "gotcha" is that the pricing expires in a year. But here's the rub -- Adobe's upgrade cycling policies mean that you either abandon upgrades ENTIRELY or you're paying every 2 years or so -- otherwise you get hosed as the discounts don't apply more than one rev back in full (you get a roughly half-discount two revs back and ZERO beyond that.)

I'm not usually a cloud person and find the premise of renting software like this offensive, but in this case the price is reasonable IF you're a student, especially when you consider that you get the entire Adobe shooting match for the year.

This is what I do... at least until the sub expires and the price goes up... then I'll re-evaluate. I'm still learning (slowly) photoshop. We'll see how it goes.

I have PSE and just recently got LR. I got the student discount on LR and PSE for sale for about $60. If you're just starting out, I think these are good places to start. There's a few things PS can do that PSE can't, but for me they aren't necessary. PSE can do a lot and in my opinion it's easier to understand than PS. I guess it just depends on what you need to do.

Unless you have a specific need that is limited, you might want to go the CS6 route. CS6 has everything LR has in the Raw module, and then all the capabilities that layers, masks, filters, adjustments, etc give you in photoshop. If you are like me, you will want to play with different techniques and explore what the software can do for you. You will fairly quickly want to move on to layers and masks to make better targeted adjustments or different looks to your photos than LR can give you with the brush and sliders. It is complex and scary at first, but it doesn't take that long to get the basic features down.

Gators1 the thing that a lot of people forget about LR is that it is much more than just the Develop module. Yes the Develop module has everything that ACR in Photoshop gives you, but you also have the Library module, which I think does a much better job of image management than you get from using Bridge, and I only have upwards of 10,000 images to sort through. The output modules for both printing and the web just do not have anything like them in PSCS. LR also makes Soft Proofing a simple matter, as although it is a recent addition seen first in V4, it seems to have been implemented as an integral part of the software, rather than the far less than intuitive implementation seen in PSCS.

The fact is that even when I have had to send an image out to PS for pixel level editing (only about 5% of them at the most) I still bring the .PSD file back into LR for Soft Proofing and Output.

Alan

To be precise, many modules are provided by Adobe as part of the 'Creative Suite' set of programs. What many folks commonly describe as 'Photoshop' is actualy the combination of

• the graphic pixel editor formerly known as 'Photoshop', plus
  
• the data organizer 'Bridge', plus
  
• the RAW conversion program module 'Adobe Camera Raw' or 'ACR'
  

BigAl007 wrote in post #15800550
Gators1 the thing that a lot of people forget about LR is that it is much more than just the Develop module. Yes the Develop module has everything that ACR in Photoshop gives you, but you also have the Library module, which I think does a much better job of image management than you get from using Bridge, and I only have upwards of 10,000 images to sort through. The output modules for both printing and the web just do not have anything like them in PSCS. LR also makes Soft Proofing a simple matter, as although it is a recent addition seen first in V4, it seems to have been implemented as an integral part of the software, rather than the far less than intuitive implementation seen in PSCS.

The fact is that even when I have had to send an image out to PS for pixel level editing (only about 5% of them at the most) I still bring the .PSD file back into LR for Soft Proofing and Output.

Alan

Agree, but it depends on your situation. With that many images you are either a professional or an obsessed amateur. You also have established a workflow in LR that suits your needs. Based on the info the OP gave us, they are a student and just getting into post processing more seriously. I assume that means they don't have a massive image library and they will want to explore and play with all that post processing software has to give them. I started out with LR, but in scouring the web to learn different ways to do things I decided I wanted CS to expand the possibilities of how I develop an image. I like LR, but if I had to decide between a superior catalog and superior processing possibilities, I would go with the latter.

Tiller wrote in post #15665319
Hey everyone, I'm looking to buy my first post processing software. All I've used so far is what little there is on flickr, and Gimp, although Gimp is extremely hard to understand and get good results. But that's probably just my stupid self

I'm wanting to get good software, and since I'm a college student, I can get either Lightroom or Photoshop CS6 for the discount price.

Should I go ahead and get CS6 since its so cheap for me right now or should I go with LR 4? Most of all, I just want something that's easy to use which is making me lean toward Lightroom, but I wanted your opinion on the matter.

Thanks,
Tyler

What kind of student are you? A photo student, or just a student who likes photography?

If you're a photo student absolutely get CS6. If not... how much editing do you want to be able to do? I know I couldn't personally just have Lightroom, I need the tools in CS6. But many people do just use LR and are happy. And then there's Elements which is another very good option if you want more than just processing but not heavy duty editing. You just have to decide how much you need the software to do for you. Someone said download trials already? Go do that. If nothing else it gives you 30 days to decide.

The creative cloud deal is good if you're using Photoshop and other titles. I'm very happy with it, especially with the student pricing. But if you're just going to get Lightroom or Photoshop Elements it may not be very cost effective. Do the math there and see if it works for you with whatever you decide to get.

Gators1 wrote in post #15808970
Agree, but it depends on your situation. With that many images you are either a professional or an obsessed amateur.

Actually as it is a bit more than 10K pictures let's call it about12000 (I'm not sitting at my computer so cannot check). Those images have been taken over 6 1/2 years, and that averages out at about 2000 a year or roughly 40 shots per week, so actually not really that many shots for a keen amature. As I said I actually like LR as much for it's output options as for the organiser. Even with half the images that I have now, keeping RAW's, processed .PSD files as well as finished JPEGS organised and up to the current version almost impossible using Bridge. The ablity to have everything reside in LR and just use that to send a correctly finished output file for the intended use is just great. By the way yes ai do keep all my RAW files, just like I kept all of my negatives, until my home was flooded and they were all desroyed, no easy backup solution for film. I moved to LR with a reasonable number of existing images, and was aided by the fact that LR automatically inluded all the existing ACR conversions, plus I brought the existing PSD/TIFF files. All the generated JPEGS I eventually discarded, when I realised how easy it was to make a new one when required. Starting out using LR would have been even better, but there was no ACR or LR when I got my first DSLR, actually there was not even any DPP from Canon, which at the time had about the worst converter I have ever seen as part of the EOS Tools/Zoombrowser suite, although the bundled Elements V2 was not bad. The software choices we have now are just so much better than then.

I do not disagree that you also need to have a pixel editor, and full Photoshop is the industry standard, if not the "best graphics editor overall", but for very many photographers when teamed with LR, Elements has all of the tools that you are likely to need. Or even an older full copy of Photoshop again teamed with the tools of LR.

Alan