Photoshop Elements VS Lightroom ??

[sam_clay]

<p>hello<br>

just wondering if there were any benefits of purchasing light room ? I have elements 11, but I hear that Lightroom is a very good product.<br>

if I have elements 11 anyway, and shoot in RAW, are there any additional benefits i could gain from the purchase of Lightroom<br>

Looking for opinions.</p>

<p>Thank you. :))</p>

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>Organizing your image collection and workflow are strengths of Lightroom. I use LR4 and CS4, 99% of my image editing is in LR, I use CS4 mostly for panoramas, HDR, stacking and more demanding editing.<br>

I could purchase CS4 at a reduced price (student edition), otherwise the combination of LR and Elements would be my choice.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>It depends which benefits you're looking for.<br>

What made me move away from Elements was the laborious way where each individual image is opened from the Library to Adobe Camera Raw, do the tweaks and return to either library or open it in the editor. And then, no batch processing. It works OK if you have to do some 50 images maybe, but with 100s of images, it is too slow. Especially if 100s of those images need the exact same edits applied - no way to copy the edits from one image to the other.<br>

Lightroom instead will allow all this. It might not have the complete toolset that the Elements editor has, but it has all the tools that you will need frequently. It's much more optimised toward dealing with large® volumes of work quickly, efficiently and focussing on the usually needed edits.</p>

<p>I would like to add, though: Lightroom isn't the only game in town. It's very good, and the most popular, but some of the competitor packages are very compelling too. I would download some trial versions (Lightroom, CaptureOne, DxO, RAWTherapee), try them for a while to see which one works out best for you and then make the purchase - or decide to stick with PS Elements.</p>

[jordan2240]

<p>Sam, you might also consider the software that came with your camera, if there was one.</p>

[sam_clay]

<p>mmmm thank you !! ok, so now I may sound like a complete editing newbie.....when I load my pictures onto my macbook they all upload to IPHOTO in their RAW format...I then download a good one onto my desktop. then I open it from my desk top which opens up the RAW editing software....after tweaks are done, I open image - which automatically sends me to the familiar elements page, (whereby you can do everything like take out blemishes etc), then I save as jpeg from there. Is this the right way to do things or am I losing any quality by doing it this way round ? Away from the focus of the question maybe but anyway....thanks for help so far :)))</p>

[ShunCheung]

Lightroom is an excellent database for images. You can sort and select by date, camera, lens, etc. I use it mainly for that

purpose, rather than editing. I mainly use a PhotoShop for editing.

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Sam, you're not loosing quality that way. But you are loosing time and disk space (copying the RAW file over to the desktop). A program like Lightroom or Aperture effectively replaces iPhoto <em>and</em> the RAW editing in one single package. So, you select the photo you want to edit from the entire list, do your edits and export it to JPEG/TIFF from one single application. No need to move from A to B. Even the free Nikon ViewNX2 (if I recall, you shoot Nikon?) would handle that just fine, though it's a very limited RAW editor.</p>

[sam_clay]

<p>OK, I see - thank you. I worry that my hard drive (disc space?), is being over loaded with too much data. Sorry daft question maybe, but is iPhoto part of a macbooks HARD DRIVE ? Does the fact i have a zillion files in there, hundreds unedited, straight off camera, affect how my computer functions becuase it takes up space ? or is it a separate software programme with infinate capacity ? I am thinking very much about keeping the mac clean and tidy and dont want it to be slow becuase of my editing choices if that makes sense ?<br>

I am clearly not a technical head when it comes to all this so very much appreciate your thoughts......off topic a bit, so sorry guys......but it IS photography editing related.<br>

PS. Yes i shoot nikon. I have down loaded lightroom trial now (and will check the rest too), and having a ten minute play it reminds me of elements......so perhaps its benefit is the storage etc like people are saying.</p>

<p>thanks again :D</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Sam, every file in iPhoto is actually a file on your hard disk. Your photos are not "in" iPhoto, but rather iPhoto is a way to view and organise them. The same is also true for Lightroom - the files coming from your camera are stored on your hard disk, always, in a folder structure (which you can see with the Finder).<br>

It does help getting a bit grips with these technicalities, because it can help you understand better the advantages (and disadvantages) of your workflow. But I'm far from an expert on Macs, so beyond the bare basics, I cannot add too much.</p>

[sam_clay]

<p>ok great thank you !! I will get there in the end !! :D<br>

THANKS EVERYONE :D</p>

[nathansanborn]

<p>I switched to lightroom a few months ago and I love it! <br />There are some great videos on youtube on the B&H event space page, "getting started with lightroom" is worth the hour to watch before importing all of your pictures into lightroom to help with catalog organization.</p>

[www.philwinterphotography.]

<p>The more I use LR5.3, the less I use Elements. LR is very good at organizing and processing a large number (or even a small number) of images. Importing, reviewing, initial editing is just faster and easier than in PSE. PSE is good when I need layers, which is not all that often, and I prefer the clone tool in PSE. Other than that, I use LR for just about everything. The biggest LR hurdle for a lot of beginners is grasping the concepts of importing and exporting images, as opposed to opening and saving. </p>

[dan_south]

<p>Find someone who has been using Lightroom for a while and have them give you a demo.</p>

[G-P]

<p>Relevant article on this subject is on our sister site photography.com titled <a href="http://www.photography.com/?p=279">"Photoshop? Elements? Lightroom? David Asch helps you choose</a>" </p>