CS2, Lightroom, Elements & DPP - Oh My!

While I've been creating and shooting photos since 1974 the new digital post-processing thing has me perplexed.

I recently bought a Canon XTi with DPP image editing software. My first DSLR since the film cameras - which now sit mothballed in the closet.

I already have the wife's Photoshop CS2 loaded onto my computer, but I find it a PITA to use.

DPP lacks many controls that CS2 has, but if my horizon is not level, I have to go to CS2 to straighten it out.

As a compromise, I am wondering if Lightroom or Elements is easier to learn & use than CS2 while offering more control than DPP?

Since I am an amateur post-processor, which software would be the better one to have and use?

Your thoughts, please.

Don't buy new software, buy a book or a video tutorial on how to use what you already have. CS2/CS3 are the most powerful image editing tools you can use.

Lightroom is good for simply processing raw files and great for organization, but it does not offer 1/10th the power or ability of photoshop.

good luck. The Lynda tutorials can be really good for beginners. I also recommend the CS3 one on one books.

Elements is a smaller "dumbed down" ( for lack of a better word) than CS3 so therefore it is easier to use. But once you learn it you really see it's limitations and wish you could do more.

I think that you should stick with CS3 and learn it.

Scott Kelby makes some excellent books on PS and they are easy to follow along with, not boring and mundane.

Eric

I started with Elements 4 and moved to 5. It does everything I want and more. It will do things I don't care to learn and things I need to learn like blend images of different exposures. With layers you can do alot. No doubt the learning curve is longer with CS3 but you may be able to learn the parts you will most often use about as fast as you would with Elements. I tried a copy of CS3 from a friend for a while. Personally, I found Elements a little more intuitive. Your mileage may vary.

Try Lightroom - free trial; or for something cheaper try Bibble ($69 for Lite version ). The advantage of these programs is they allow you to do all the basic corrections (non-layers or retouching) like cropping, straightening, curves, shadow or highlight correction, sharpening, lens correction etc. - the sort of stuff almost every image can benefit from - without taking much time or effort; I save Photoshop for the images that a)need more detailed work and b) are worthy of it. To open every picture and adjust it in Photoshop is a significant time commitment that for me just isn't worth it for the majority of my casual/family pictures.

I couldn't agree more. But, Photoshop, even the old versions, were hard for me to pick up on. What it takes is a lot of daily use to keep what you've learned fresh in your head, or you lose it. Buy some books and learn the best there is. Once you do, you'll love it.

How many amateurs here do meaningful Photoshop work on all or allmost all their images? If you do, you've impressed me. I just find that I have a lot of what I consider sound but unspectacular shots that are meaningful for me or my family but are basically documentary in function. If I get them decent in Bibble (with a touch of shadow recovery or curves, some WB if needed, a bit of saturation boost and some vibrance, crop or straighten if needed, some sharpening) it's a 30 second process easily copied/pasted onto other similar images from that day and in 15 minutes I've got the pictures to a decent state so they're better than out of camera jpgs would have been and basically good enough for my needs. Sure for the few good pictures I'll print or feature (or if an important shot that needs some retouching) I'll go to Photoshop but it seems it would take me FOREVER to do every shot in Photoshop (and I have a fast PC).

There's a lot of functionality in Photoshop; it's so overwhelming that it can be discouraging. I found that the trick is to master just those pieces of functionality that you need in Photoshop, rather than trying to learn the whole thing. Working through a book, as Transcend suggested earlier in this thread, really did it for me. Although your mileage may vary, I learned a lot of practical stuff from "The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers" by Scott Kelby (he also has one for CS3).

I appreciate everyone's input. Good viewpoints.