Elements 9 or CS5?

What's the difference? I have Lightroom 3.2, which one should I get to go with it?

Well, Elements has many great tools and can work very well in conjunction with Lightroom. I'd say that the key issue is to whether you will do the majority of your work in Lightroom and only occasionally want/need the extra abilities of the image editor or you want/need the image editor to be an integral part of your workflow, especially for volumes of photography. CS5 has some tools for processing and automating that Elements doesn't have.

I'd say go for Elements and learn how to use it, and in the meantime get the full benefits of using Lightroom. Over time, you will either come to utilize the tools and integrated interface of Lightroom happily as the core of your workflow and just occasionally work on an image with Elements, or you will be less happy with Lightroom and find yourself wanting more from Elements. You will either find Lightroom handling your typical volume of shooting from start to finish or you will wish Elements could handle that kind of volume.

So, over time you will get a feel of whether CS5 will truly be "value added". CSx has tools like Image Processor to handle volumes automatically as well as the Photoshop version of HDR and exposure blending that are there for you to use without muss or fuss, but the question will be how much will you want those abilities (you can get HDR plugins for Lightroom and you can do exposure blending in Elements, just not quite as automatically set up for you like in CSx).

Myself, I was using CSx before Lightroom came out. I moved from an early version of Elements for the various reasons I've listed, and CSx became the vital core of my workflow...until...Lig​htroom was released and stabilized in its early updates and it really fit my needs. I can shoot a batch of photos and because I'm not big on depending on things like cloning and HDR for the vast majority of my shooting I find that I can process hundreds of photos, output for the Web and do the printing I want/need to do out of Lightroom (and also organize my library) and Photoshop is rarely needed. It's kinda funny, because these days I open Photoshop occasionally to aid in a discussion here or when helping my daughter with a project, but not so much for my own photography!

So if I were starting over again, had LR3 and not Photoshop, I'd follow my own advice, get Elements, and learn to really use it while happily doing my "real work" in Lightroom. Then, as my learning process with Elements moved along I may try the free trial of CSx...

tonylong wrote in post #11199139
Well, Elements has many great tools and can work very well in conjunction with Lightroom. I'd say that the key issue is to whether you will do the majority of your work in Lightroom and only occasionally want/need the extra abilities of the image editor or you want/need the image editor to be an integral part of your workflow, especially for volumes of photography. CS5 has some tools for processing and automating that Elements doesn't have.

Another key issue is, when you export your images, do you do it in 8 bit or 16 bit? If you like to work with 16 bit images, then Elements is not for you because many of the tools will not work. If you work with 8 bit images, then everything works fine.

Mark-B wrote in post #11199394
Another key issue is, when you export your images, do you do it in 8 bit or 16 bit? If you like to work with 16 bit images, then Elements is not for you because many of the tools will not work. If you work with 8 bit images, then everything works fine.

That's true, and a big reason to get the most out of your Raw converter as well.

I just picked up Elements 9 for use as a companion to Lightroom. Seems to work well. Call me crazy, but I prefer it to CS3 as the learning curve for the full-blown PS was just more than I had time to take on. I basically only use any PS when I have some major editing on an image (i.e. making composites for holiday cards and the like). PSE9 also has content aware fill which is pretty neat.

I was happy enough with my PSE7, but I needed something that would natively handle my HD video files and so bought a greatly discounted bundle with Premiere Elements. For the difference in price, the upgrade to PSE9 was well worth it.

I had Elements 7 and bought CS5 (student discount) Just like botw, I don't have time for the learning curve so I bought PSE 9. Some tasks are much easier to accomplish in Elements. PSE 9 is only $50 at Costco. It's priced at $79 but its on sale.

Mike R wrote in post #11269641
I had Elements 7 and bought CS5 (student discount) Just like botw, I don't have time for the learning curve so I bought PSE 9. Some tasks are much easier to accomplish in Elements. PSE 9 is only $50 at Costco. It's priced at $79 but its on sale.

Just a heads up for everyone. Im not a costco member but you can still buy it online, free shipping and only a 4 dollar surcharge for not being a member. 59 bucks total to your door for elements 9!

Anything that can't be done in LR + PSE could be outsourced cheaply I would think.

I have been wondering that myself. Doing a test drive of CS5 and well it hates me. I have PSE7 and was thinking to upgrade to PSE9 or CS5 but my hangup is being able to open my CR2 RAW files. 7 wouldn't do it without some complicated formula and CS5 does it just fine. So my question is does the upgrade to PSE9 allow me to open my CR2 RAW files. I have searched online for this answer and have yet to find it. Anybody here know if it works?

M&LPhotography wrote in post #11273903
I have been wondering that myself. Doing a test drive of CS5 and well it hates me. I have PSE7 and was thinking to upgrade to PSE9 or CS5 but my hangup is being able to open my CR2 RAW files. 7 wouldn't do it without some complicated formula and CS5 does it just fine. So my question is does the upgrade to PSE9 allow me to open my CR2 RAW files. I have searched online for this answer and have yet to find it. Anybody here know if it works?

PSE9 should certainly open your Raw files. The question is -- have you updated the Camera Raw plug-in for PSE8? I don't remember where support for the 5D2 started, it may have been PSE8, but I'm not sure. The thing to do is to go to the Adobe pages covering Camera Raw for PSE 7 and read to find if you have the latest update and if it supports the 5D2. You can get a start by finding the place by Googling "Camera raw elements 7" and you should see several Adobe site references.

I haven't used Elements for quite a while -- just note that there is a difference in how Camera Raw is installed in Elements vs Photoshop. For example, in Photoshop you can automatically install the Camera Raw updtate by running Help/Updates, but I'm not sure what that process entails in Elements, but you will find an Adobe page with specific instructions for installing the right version for PSE7.

As far as Elements vs Photoshop, well, Photoshop has some great things that don't go so well in Elements, but yeah, Photoshop has so many things that it can be cumbersome to those that want a simple in-out workflow and don't work with large quantities. So, yeah, update to PSE9 for the latest, enjoy, produce good images, and maybe one day you will want CSx, but maybe not.

I have Elements 7 and just bought and installed Elements 9 a couple of day ago. ($90 plus $20 mail-in rebate and free shipping from Amazon.com.)

I think it was well worth it. For one thing, PSE9 now includes content-aware fill. Also, adjustment layers are now "live" (same as with PSE8 ), which is hard to explain, but essentially you can have the adjustment layer active and do other things to the image. Also, PSE9 now has layer masks!

One of the biggest motivators for me was moving from ACR 5.6 to ACR 6.x.

PSE9 came with ACR 6.1. Once I got it installed and clicked on "check for updates" it reported that a newer version of ACR was available and automatically updated to ACR 6.2. With PSE7 I had to do the update from 5.4 to 5.6 manually.

mebuck wrote in post #11273903
I have been wondering that myself. Doing a test drive of CS5 and well it hates me. I have PSE7 and was thinking to upgrade to PSE9 or CS5 but my hangup is being able to open my CR2 RAW files. 7 wouldn't do it without some complicated formula and CS5 does it just fine. So my question is does the upgrade to PSE9 allow me to open my CR2 RAW files. I have searched online for this answer and have yet to find it. Anybody here know if it works?

Here's the Adobe download page for Adobe Camera Raw (Windows version).

http://www.adobe.com …oduct=40&platfo​rm=Windows

If you click on the various versions you can see what cameras were added and which versions of PSE are supported. The last version of ACR that you can install on PSE7 is 5.6, PSE8 and PSE9 can use everything through the latest, which is ACR 6.2.

The 5D Mark II was added to ACR 5.2, by the way.

I have just updated from Elements 7 to 8 in preparation to moving all my photos off the laptop to an external hard drive and it was a dismal failure as the new Elements failed to connect all the files and is unusable so back to 7. I am considering moving to Lightroom as I believe it will handle the organization of approx 12000 photos better. I read something about not using Raw files but converting to DNG. Is this generally thought to be a better move? I do very very little pp but like to have the raw files as well as the JPEGs. I have lots of back ups so suppose I could keep the Raws there but am a bit lost with this whole issue. Sorry if this is a bit off topic but not sure where is best to post it. Thanks.

Well, a big question would be why did Elements 8 have problemes -- what do you mean by "it failed to connect all the files"? Were these Raw files from a newer camera? Elements uses a different timeline for Raw updates and so you might want to update your Camera Raw plug-in (using the link above that Rimmer provides) and see if that helps.

As far as DNG goes, the big thing it offers is backwards-compatibility so that Raw files from a new camera can be opened by older versions of Adobe Raw processors -- Lightroom and Camera Raw in Elements and CSx. Then there is also the "future-compatibility" idea that in the future Canon CR2 files from our cameras may no longer be supported by new software releases and to prepare for that converting to DNG can prepare you for that (shades of the movie "2012"!). Anyway, this is a matter of preference, but bear in mind that if you use DPP, DNG will not work with it. Many DNG users have their CR2 files as well -- a lot of us have DPP active as well as Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

As far as using Lightroom rather than depending on Elements, I'd say it depends. Get your Elements 8 Camera Raw updated first (or upgrade to Elements 9) because it would suck to not be able to use the newer version. You might also install the Canon Raw converter, Digital Photo Professional, updated to the newest versions, because it is a good quick Raw converter and can also be used as a "reference" if you are using another Raw processor.

Then, once you are up to speed and running with the newer version of Elements (and DPP) you will get a feel of whether the abilities of Lightroom will be worth the price (and the different workflow).

I use LR3 and CS3 and if I had to do it over again I would get Elements instead of CS3. I do most of my work in LR and just tweak in CS3 and Elements is more than capable of handling those tweaks.