lightroom 2.7, photoshop cs4 and iphoto

Ok I have a couple of questions. I have just really started to learn how to use photoshop and have questions in regards to workflow.

My wife uses iphoto because it is easy and she doesn't do any editing. I usually have the backup pictures on an external drive that are orginized by seperate folders.

What do I do with lightroom? Sounds like a dumb question, but I am a little confused with it. If I add a new folders with new photos, does lightroom automatically recognize them and add it to the library? Does anyone just use photoshop or do you use both. What I have done in the past is just open the individual files with ps, edit, save and close.

Is that the antiquated way of doing things? Also, I usally shoot jpeg and raw. I send the jpegs to iphoto and the raws to the external drive.

Thanks much,

Richard

I use Aperture (analogous to Lightroom) for 90% of my editing. I rarely use Photoshop anymore. It's mostly for when I need to do layers (which isn't all that often). LR and Aperture are raw image editors and database applications that excel in DAM (digital asset management). The allow you to search metadata and define your own search terms for finding images in a hurry. I now have more than 20,000 images in my Aperture database. I cannot imaging not having Aperture or LR as my primary image manipulation application.

I use a Bridge/Photoshop Combination - but really only Bridge - saving my CameraRAW edits in seperate files.
Alternatively - I might end up playing with DPP every now and then.

See if you can get Lightroon to save your CameraRAW edits as files with your RAWs - that means if you delete the library that Lightroom creates it'll still work.
If I move my RAWs with their .xmp file to any other computer with CameraRAW it should open them the same way I edited them.

I don't know how useful iPhoto will be to you if you delve into using Lightroom, and I don't have a Mac and comment any more about that.

With Lightroom, you want to Import your Raw files -- they need to be imported before you can process them. Whether you import the jpegs is up to you (I only shoot Raw and don't like the extra "baggage" of jpeg copies).

You may or may not want to open file in Photoshop, but you can easily do this from Lightroom in a few ways. It is just a question of whether you need to open a file in PS -- I prefer to do all the work I can in LR, including printing and exporting for the Web and such.

Here's a recent thread that goes a bit more in depth about LR and PS:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=872985