Elements 11 or light room

Just a quick question. I have elements 11 and i was wondering if i am missing anything by not having light room. I enjoy shooting wildlife and am just starting with taking portraits when the weather turns bad so do i need both or is elements ok.

Assuming you shoot raw your best bet would be to download the 30 day free trial of LR and see for yourself. If you shoot jpg I'd skip LR.

I use LR for most of my processing now but still go into CS5 for some work. LR has cut my storage needs dramatically (I only save the raw files, no jpg) and is a great organizational tool with key words, import and export rules, etc. And I just saw it on sale for $110 or so.

Good advice from Dave. I have used Elements since version 5 and resisted Lightroom for a long time. I finally got a copy of Scott Kelby's book and after studying it was convinced to give it a try. Learn Lightroom and use it fully the way it was intended (for organization as well as processing) and I think you will be very pleased. Keep Elements around for those occasions where you need layers and masks -- no need for the latest version -- I upgrade Elements only every two or three versions. If you do it now you can get a good sale price, and I highly recommend getting a good book to go with it. Scott Kelby and Martin Evening are recommended here frequently. Peachpit is having a sale on E-books right now, I think (they carry Kelby titles), and I saw the Evening E-book on sale somewhere recently, too.

I like Dave's comment about storage, too. I used to convert my RAW files to TIFFs using Elements and save all of those. Now my main storage format is RAW and the only TIFFs I save or those that have gone to Elements or Nik software for further processing. JPGs are produced on an as-needed basis and then deleted after use (printing, posting, E-mailing, etc.).

+1 to what Dave said. They are really two different products. LR is a full featured RAW development package, with a digital asset management module (plus some other features). PSE has only a few basic RAW development controls and is primarily a pixel editing package. I have both. I do 99% of my editing in LR and occasionally use PSE for pixel editing work that requires layers or cloning.

Thanks for the advice i usually shot in raw and jpeg but find it is starting to take up to much room and may start just shooting in raw and save jpeg for those quick shots to share with my kids ( they live all over canada )

They should add layers to LR

Dj R wrote in post #16487728
They should add layers to LR

For the same reason that the RAW processing stage cannot be fully integrated into the full Photoshop (or PSE) is why we will (probably) never see layers incorporated in to LR. RAW processing is a parametric process, there are no changes made to the RAW file, all the changes are recorded as a list of set control A to level z and B to y. Ever noticed that if you use a lot of local brush strokes the system starts to slow down? Working from a texural discription of the position of every stroke the system has to recalculate ALL of them for every change you make in the editing process.

To the OP it is more a case of LR AND PSE than OR. The latest couple of versions of PSE have just about all the functionallity that a photographer might need. Yes the 16 bit support is limited, but if you are shooting RAW and using the RAW processor to it's full then the real need for 16 bit is removed, as by the time you get to PSE you will mostly be moving pixels around rather than making big changes in levels/colours. The biggest problem with PSE is now in the version of ACR that is shipped with it. This has had most of the really effective tools removed from it. By far the cheapest way to the full version of ACR is to go with LR. The most important thing to remember about LR though is that it is a (almost) fully integrated system for managing and processing images. The output options included with LR are just as powerful as the cataloguing and RAW processing options; but to get the best from LR you need to think about this aspect up front.

Alan

I'd say start with LR5 with the understanding that eventually, after you have mastered all the various tools in LR, not just the Basic panel, you may discover a need to add PSE to your arsenal. The one real feature that PSE offers that can't be done in LR is layers and layers has primarily two uses - the use of different blending modes and compositing. But understanding blending modes and knowing how to use them to achieve results unobtainable otherwise is a pretty advanced skill level and as for composites, not everybody wants to create a picture of Marilyn Monroe kissing a grizzly bear, although I will admit that for simple composites, like a Christmas card, you do need PSE or Paintshop Pro or something similar.

Dj R wrote in post #16487728
They should add layers to LR

No, they shouldn't.

PSE 12 is $55 on Adobe site until Dec. 2.

Since the OP has Elements 11, to me the "big" things to look at are the Raw processor and the Organizer, and compare them with the Lightroom tools.

Elements does have a Raw processor, but compared to Lightroom and CSx it is quite limited. Get the LR free trial (and a good book or online resource) and check it out, the advances in LR are pretty impressive.


The Elements Organizer is actually pretty good but basic and also doesn't have the integration LR offers. I'd again take the time to carefully "walk through" the LR trial, using a book or online guide to step through it and get a good understanding of the LR workflow!

With LR, "workflow" is a major concept. If you are "serious" about your photography, you should be pretty pleased with what LR has to offer!

Take LR's "organization" or cataloging out of the equation, as i'm rather happy with my own system of folders in Windows (Every day i shoot, gets a new folder ie. 2013-11-30). Does this change any opinions? I only use DPP for my RAW conversions.. and 99.9% of my processing, but also have Elements 8. I don't bother with Elements (8), as it doesn't have layers and masks, etc.

I'm thinking very hard about Elements 12, as these are now included (i think they added layers in v 9 or 10). I've tried most of the Adobe trials, but always seem to run out of time, before the 30 days expires. I like the content aware fill ..or whatever it's called, in Elements now too.

1Tanker wrote in post #16491736
Take LR's "organization" or cataloging out of the equation, as i'm rather happy with my own system of folders in Windows (Every day i shoot, gets a new folder ie. 2013-11-30). Does this change any opinions? I only use DPP for my RAW conversions.. and 99.9% of my processing, but also have Elements 8. I don't bother with Elements (8), as it doesn't have layers and masks, etc.

I'm thinking very hard about Elements 12, as these are now included (i think they added layers in v 9 or 10). I've tried most of the Adobe trials, but always seem to run out of time, before the 30 days expires. I like the content aware fill ..or whatever it's called, in Elements now too.

The thing to realize is that Lightroom was conceived and developed to be a Digital Asset Management (DAM) "solution" for photographers from "the ground up" as well as the integrated Raw processor and output solutions.

So for someone not interested in a DAM workflow, then Lightroom can be frustrating. Yes, a top-notch Raw processing app and output tools, but then, as you say, Digital Photo Professional has in recent years become more useful for Raw processing (although I prefer some of the Lightroom/ACR capabilities).

With Elements (the newest version) I figure you would get some of the capabilities that the newest version of Lightroom provides, I'm not sure, but then you would not use DPP as your Raw processor!

tonylong wrote in post #16491854
The thing to realize is that Lightroom was conceived and developed to be a Digital Asset Management (DAM) "solution" for photographers from "the ground up" as well as the integrated Raw processor and output solutions.

So for someone not interested in a DAM workflow, then Lightroom can be frustrating. Yes, a top-notch Raw processing app and output tools, but then, as you say, Digital Photo Professional has in recent years become more useful for Raw processing (although I prefer some of the Lightroom/ACR capabilities).

With Elements (the newest version) I figure you would get some of the capabilities that the newest version of Lightroom provides, I'm not sure, but then you would not use DPP as your Raw processor!

Or i could still use DPP for the RAW conversion, then send it to Elements (as a TIFF)? Would ACR in Elements offer any tangible advantages over DPP RAW processing?

Thanks Tony!

Sorry for taking this thread slightly OT.

1Tanker wrote in post #16491861
Or i could still use DPP for the RAW conversion, then send it to Elements (as a TIFF)? Would ACR in Elements offer any tangible advantages over DPP RAW processing?

Thanks Tony!

Sorry for taking this thread slightly OT.

I'm not sure what version of ACR Elements 11 has...someone can chime in here!

The newer versions of ACR that come with LR4/5 and CS5/6 have some excellent Highlight recovery tools and some other good tools as well. If the Elements version of ACR is, I believe, Version 7 or better, then it should show a significant improvement in the Highlight tool over DPP! There are, of course, other things to consider, except the Elements version of ACR is "stripped down" compared to LR and Photoshop...

But then like I said, you can't do your Raw processing in both Elements and DPP!