LIghtroom or elements 8

[scott_lewis2]

<p>Should I buy both or one over the other</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Both. They do completely different things. Lightroom is for organizing photos, making them searchable and sortable, and some types of editing. Elements is for editing individual photos and has some editing functionality that Lightroom doesn't. If choosing only one... I don't know about you but I'd take Lightroom.</p>

[sfcole]

<p>If you do any film scans you may want Elements. Essential for dust/scratches on B&W.</p>

[pcnilssen]

<p>It all depends.</p>

<p>After spending some time wit LR, I tend to use the editing functions there more and more. I use PS now for more specialized tasks which LR cannot do (or which I have not found in LR yet). For me, those tasks ar quite few.</p>

<p>I'd download a 30 free trial of LR, and play with it.</p>

[acedigital]

<p>Lightroom doesn't do any of the graphics related stuff like adding text or graphics to a photo, but lightroom has most of what is in Adobe Camera Raw and/or Photoshop for adjustments.</p>

[alan_goldhammer]

<p>I started off with Elements over a year ago when I was moving from film to digital. When I got Lightroom (try it for the 30 days) I found that I really didn't need Elements at all since I could do everything in Lightroom a lot more easily. I added Photoshop over the summer when Adobe was running a "secret" discount on it (you had to go way down into their website to find the $299 price). Elements strips things down to 8 bits from 16 which loses information (whether this is visible in prints or not is questionable). Only you can make the decision but note that all three programs come with 30 day free trials.</p>

[patricklavoie]

<p>Get Lightroom first (you might not need Element at all) and then get a wacom bamboo pen & touch for 120$..you get Element 7 for PC and Nik Color Effex...this is the best deal you can get to work really well.</p>

[steve_wagner1]

<p>Nice one Patrick, this is a very good approach.</p>

[owen_s]

<p>if you shoot raw, then lightroom is 10,000 times petter than phototshop as you can get to the 5 levels of fstop information kept in the raw file, when you want to darken areas and get details back, (as long as they were not burnt out), while in pgotoshop, you spend about 30 secons in the raw converter, and just try and clone/grey neutral layer to repar too areas of luminace problems</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Scott,<br>

What camera do you use? There may be free software for the RAW conversion included or available from it manufacterer. For some brands, the manufacterer's own software actually renders better results than the Adobe raw conversion. "Alternative" RAW converters like Capture One or Bibble are also worth the consideration. They may lack the catalogue function of Lightroom, but building a catalogue can also be done very nicely in Photoshop Elements (which is a lot cheaper).<br>

Photoshop Elements is a simple swiss army knife, and just very useful as an allround editing tool. However, it has a huge downside: you cannot convert images in batch. If you have big volume of photos that needs to be converted from RAW to JPEG or TIFF, it can be a pain. So, if you work with high volumes, PSE can not be your only tool. Otherwise, it is a fine choice.</p>

<p>Sure Lightroom is a good product, but there are other great options too. I'd recommend trying out several trial versions of RAW converters to see which one gives you the best quality output for your RAW files, and which workflow you like best. I would not limit the list to these 2 software titles. Just try them out, it's why trial versions exist.</p>

<p>Alan,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Elements strips things down to 8 bits from 16 which loses information (whether this is visible in prints or not is questionable).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So does lightroom if you save to JPEG. And for most uses, 8 bits is not a terrible problem at all.</p>

<p>Owen,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>if you shoot raw, then lightroom is 10,000 times petter than phototshop</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Photoshop uses the exact same RAW conversion engine as Lightroom. So no, it isn't 10k times better. It's a different workflow.</p>

[les_lammers]

<p>Try both..one at a time. Try a few others too. *I* like Silkypix as a RAW converter...it does batch conversions. I'm not sure there is a *best*... you need to find what works *best* for you.</p>

[steve_wagner1]

<blockquote>

<p>... 8 bits from 16 ...</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Adobe recommends a raw to 16bit wide gamut tiff workflow, which LR is well tuned for. There is a big difference between 8bit sRGB and 16bit wide gamut - more colors and much more color information, just as there is often a considerable sacrifice involved in using a lossy format such as jpeg rather than tiff.</p>

<p>I would posit that for anyone that is serious about their photography, there is no reason or excuse for working in 8bit or sRGB for your archival rendered files from raw. If you create a "final file" from your raw, one that you then make various versions from (a file that typically would undergo a bit more adjustment in PS after LR), then you gain alot and lose nothing by making it wide gamut 16bit. Making 8-bit sRGB versions from that file as needed is simple, and by converting the profile at such time consistent color is maintained.</p>

<p>If you simply keep your raw in the catalog and only make versions from it as needed for this print or that website - and you don't make a rendered "final file" - then you can choose a bit depth and space as you go.</p>

<p>The old paradigm, before library based software became commonplace, was a scan of a slide, keep the raw scan, untouched, and make a corrected version, and then as now it was better as a 16-bit wide gamut tiff, you keep your options open and maintain the highest quality, do it once and do it right. A 16-bit Adobe RGB tiff can always be made into an 8-bit sRGB file, while the reverse is not possible in any meaningful way. The digital equivalent, <em>perhaps</em> , is shoot raw, adjust in the library based software, output a tiff, and further correct that in PS. I'm only saying that if that's how you work, think twice about creating a big portfolio of 8-bit sRGB final tiffs.</p>