RAW in LR vs Elements ?

I don't have Elements and only played with it briefly.

A friend is looking to buy it. He wants to eventually get into RAW files. What editing tools will he miss vs LR ? Specifically, does ACR provided with Elements have the same quality Sharpen and Noise removal ?

I would say Lightroom or Lightroom plus Elements, not LR or PSE.
I started out with PSE 9 and did most of my work in the editor (not the RAW development module, ACR) because my photos needed saving in the form of lots of cloning and similar repair work.

After a few months my photography improved and I was no longer looking to rescue bad photos but rather to enhance my good ones. I was using PSEs RAW development module but had seen a lot of people talking about Lightroom. I downloaded the trial version and found that that the PSE version of ACR doesn't come close. It has only the most basic tools compared to Lightroom.

I now do 99.9% of my work in Lightroom and only occasionally use PSE for the rare cases where I want to clone something, replace a sky, do exposure blending or other similar tasks.

What a coincidence. I'd just been checking up on the differences for another thread and I've still got the link in my clipboard. Here's a list.

I was quite surprised when I saw just what was lacking.

hollis_f wrote in post #15952334
What a coincidence. I'd just been checking up on the differences for another thread and I've still got the link in my clipboard. Here's a list.

I was quite surprised when I saw just what was lacking.

Good lord. I knew PSE has ACR "Light", but this is not only castrated ACR, it's had its arms and legs hacked off as well.

Thanks. Looks like both are missing the Noise Removal and Sharpness tools. I understand the lack of adjustment brushes, but NR is what makes LR stand out.

No NR and the Sharpening tools are still there. They are in the third tab from the left in the Full ACR interface, which did not have a red box around it. It has the two triangle (cone actually) shapes as the icon in the pictures.

Alan

So looks like the only thing he'd miss then is the Lens correction. Adjustment Brushes are easily replaced by local edit tools in PSE (granted this is non reversible unlike LR brushes).

How does NR in PSE compare to LR ?

Amamba wrote in post #15952662
So looks like the only thing he'd miss then is the Lens correction. Adjustment Brushes are easily replaced by local edit tools in PSE (granted this is non reversible unlike LR brushes).

How does NR in PSE compare to LR ?

The newest version of Elements should have the same Sharpening/NR as LR4. However, a lot more is missing than just the Adjustment Brushes and the Lens Correction. No Tone Curve, no HSL, no Grayscale, no Split Toning, no Presets or Snapshots, no Cloning/Spot Removal, yikes!

This is why if someone is serious about stepping into Raw shooting they need to look at a dedicated Raw processor and keep Elements as their dedicated image editor!