Lightroom????

Hey guys and gals,
I use CS4 to work on my images but I keep seeing a lot of people talking about Lightroom. Can someone tell me what Lightroom does that CS4 does not. I'm not a pro by any means so I would like to know if I'm missing something by not using Lightroom.

Thanks
R.

Lightroom 2.7 will give you an excellent file management system that many people like better than Bridge. Its RAW editing and converting is the same as ACR 5.7 that you already have in PSCS4. However, LR 3 will have features like those of ACR 6.1 for which you will need PSCS5.

Lightroom and Photoshop are complimentary products. There is some overlap between them but lightroom was designed for Photographer's workflow. Even if you are not a Pro Photog, download a trial version and take a look at it. I think you will like it.

Some of the features I very commonly use in LR:

1) Easy to handle many photos into the library

2) Quick selection of photos in rejects and keepers

3) Quick adjustment of photo with the most common PP commands

4) Batch process from RAW to jpeg made painless.

Other people have other features that they use more. Those above are just mine

Lightroom was developed because many working photographers felt like Photoshop had a lot of "stuff" they didn't need and then a lot of "stuff" they used only occasionally, and that all that "stuff" had the effect of cluttering their workspace and, when it came to their normal "workflow" had a way of making things more complicated and less efficient than they needed it to be.

A lot of shooters had adopted the Raw format to get the most out of their photos without resorting to the type of manipulations that Photoshop specializes in, and so a team of Adobe developers, including the engineers of Adobe Camera Raw, put together a "photographer's workflow managing application" built around the same Raw processor as was found in Photoshop CSx. It combined the common file management and photo organizing tasks with output tasks like printing and exporting converted Raw files all together with the Raw processing into one integrated interface, and made things like batch processing a matter of simple integrated steps so that a photog could do much if not all that was needed without having to hop around multiple interfaces and dialogs, the way we did things in Photoshop.

That being said, a Photoshop user doesn't "need" Lightroom, because you can do virtually all Lightroom does within CSx. It is more a matter of workflow efficiency. To me, LR is a great workflow tool, it does all I need for almost all of my photos, and for the few that require Photoshop touches, it has easy ways of transferring files to PS and some (like using PS droplets) that enable batch processing in PS as well.

Ironically, LR has been so successful (and Aperture on the Apple side that has a similar "model") that many photogs don't ask "do I really need Lightroom if I have Photoshop?" but rather "do I really need Photoshop if I have Lightroom?", and many have happily adopted Photoshop Elements as a lighter, simpler and way less expensive way of handling the occasional image manipulations while happily doing the volume of photo processing in Lightroom.

It should also be said that the years since Lightroom was first released have seen some dramatic enhancements to Raw processing that have even more made the Raw-centered workflow a rich and compelling experience -- in fact, just this week lens distortion correction was added to ACR (6.1) and will be seen in the upcoming LR3 -- I don't know about others, but seeing this added made me feel like "Kerchunk! Another very cool piece falls into place" and gave me a bit of a chill of pleasure!

I'll also add that advances in Raw processing can also be seen in other non-Adobe products. Aperture is, like I said, built on the same "one interface does all" model and has most of the tools that Lightroom has (but lags behind in the newest innovations like the lens correction I mentioned) and even the Canon DPP has been increasing its capabilities -- not aproaching those of Lightroom, but still able to deliver great results and many photogs have taken up DPP rather than Lightroom because of that, but for the integrated interface as well as the advanced toolset, Lightroom to me still hits the spot.

I've just came across an issue in Lightroom that somebody can help me with.

Once I select my photos, I want to change the colour balance of all photos. How do I do this?
I use the "CTRL A" function to select all the photos but if I use the dropper to select the point, it will only adjust the current photo and not the rest.

BTW, it's easy in DPP but how to do it in LR?

I just use the Synch tool in the Develop module -- you can do a bunch of adjustments and then Synch and Select All to apply them all to your selected images (with the one you have adjusted being the "active" photo) or you can Select None and then just pick the ones you want to apply. I typically do any common adjustments then in the Synchronize dialog I deselect Crop and keep everything else selected.

You can also right-click or use a shortcut to synchronize.

tonylong wrote in post #10180074
I just use the Synch tool in the Develop module -- you can do a bunch of adjustments and then Synch and Select All to apply them all to your selected images (with the one you have adjusted being the "active" photo) or you can Select None and then just pick the ones you want to apply. I typically do any common adjustments then in the Synchronize dialog I deselect Crop and keep everything else selected.

You can also right-click or use a shortcut to synchronize.

Works!! Thanks

Thank you for the info, much appreciated.

R.

Speed.....more speed.
All I use it for is processing photos.
It is SO much faster than Photoshop and very easy to learn.

I think lightroom has a trial period. Try it and see if you like it...

Bookmarking. Great thread!

rickp1 wrote in post #10179253
Hey guys and gals,
I use CS4 to work on my images but I keep seeing a lot of people talking about Lightroom. Can someone tell me what Lightroom does that CS4 does not. I'm not a pro by any means so I would like to know if I'm missing something by not using Lightroom.

LR provides a digital workflow analogous to an analog (film) workflow. Since moving to Aperture (which parallels LR on Macs) my use of Photoshop has dropped to almost nothing. Only on rare occasions to I fire up Photoshop. LR gives you much better organization tools, including metadata managment (think database) along with the ability to create different versions of the same image without making huge copies of those images - much more efficient on hard drive space. Plus, all your edits are non-destructive to the original image.

tonylong wrote in post #10179894
Lightroom was developed because many working photographers felt like Photoshop had a lot of "stuff" they didn't need...

Nah, LR was developed because Apple released Aperture!