27 Replies Latest reply: May 8, 2012 4:32 PM by trshaner RSS

    Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.

    Lucien Schilling Community Member

      I have both, I'm used to Photoshop but not to Lightroom. Because I know Photoshop, I'm using Photoshop to do the work. But there need to be somewhere some manipulations that should be better done in Lightroom!

       

      So may be someone can enlighten me.

        • 1. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
          homeless05

          For me, Lightroom provide a simple way of "cataloging" all my pictures, sorting them, developing "name tags', i.e., Paris trip, or under collections the ability to further segregate pictures by ratings, color tags.  Using the traditional "Windows driven" folder system without Lightroom makes it more difficult to do finite sorts and most important ways to find the picture unless you create an elaborate name filing system to find that picture. Given my age and daily decline of 1000's of brain cells, I don't have to worry about "where's that picture" using Lightroom.

          • 2. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
            web-weaver Community Member

            There are various reasons and naturally it depends also on what kind of work you do, what your typical workflow is, and also how many photos you already have and how many you will get per month.

            Basically, PS is THE editing program for in-depth editing and for dealing with single images - one after the other.

             

            LR is also an editing tool but it is above all a superb image managing tool. LR keeps track of your images on any of your hard drives (including external drives); you can easily keyword your photos and track and find them by keywords.

            For editing photos LR is superb if you have to edit many photos in a similar way and it does iot very fast.

             

            The main reason is: LR does not change your image-file (the pixels) at all. Any changes you make in LR are stored in a database called the Catalog.

            You can always go back to your original the way it came out of yout camera. Only when you Export your photos are the edit-changes applied to the pixel-file - of a copy of your original photo.

             

            I would recommend that you watch some of the very good videos on Adobe's website to learn what LR can do your you.

            WW

            • 3. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
              Lucien Schilling Community Member

              I need to know where the picture is, because I'm working with other tools, that

              may not be integrated to Lightroom: InDesign, Illustrator...

              • 4. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                Lucien Schilling Community Member
                function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                web-weaver wrote:

                 

                LR is also an editing tool but it is above all a superb image managing tool. LR keeps track of your images on any of your hard drives (including external drives); you can easily keyword your photos and track and find them by keywords.

                For editing photos LR is superb if you have to edit many photos in a similar way and it does iot very fast.

                 

                The main reason is: LR does not change your image-file (the pixels) at all. Any changes you make in LR are stored in a database called the Catalog.

                You can always go back to your original the way it came out of yout camera. Only when you Export your photos are the edit-changes applied to the pixel-file - of a copy of your original photo.

                 

                I would recommend that you watch some of the very good videos on Adobe's website to learn what LR can do your you.

                WW


                External drives: You mean finding back the picture when the drive is not connected? We use network storage of our whole image collection!

                 

                We shoot pictures in Raw and use Bridge to view and Raw converter to convert.Sounds rather like free Lightroom?

                 

                What are the videos I need to watch? I watched some, but didn't get my question answered: Why did I buy this software?

                • 5. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                  b_gossweiler Community Member

                  Lucien Schillung wrote:

                   

                  We shoot pictures in Raw and use Bridge to view and Raw converter to convert.Sounds rather like free Lightroom?

                  Not without the develop functions.

                   

                  What are the videos I need to watch? I watched some, but didn't get my question answered: Why did I buy this software?

                  Julieanne Kost has published a series of very good videos about LR and how to make the best of it.

                   

                  Beat

                  • 6. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                    b_gossweiler Community Member

                    Lucien Schillung wrote:

                     

                    Why did I buy this software?

                    You should know, because you had the opportunity of a full function 30 day trial before purchase.

                     

                    Beat

                    • 7. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                      Cornelia-I Community Member

                      Hi Lucien,

                      Of course I can't answer why you actually bought LR.

                      But my personal take, owning also both LR3 and PS CS5 but with skills the opposite way round than you, is along a recommendation derived from Bruce Fraser & Jeff Schewe as well as Martin Evening:

                      If you shoot RAW there are many things you should first do in Camera Raw before using genuine PS tools.

                       

                      And all this camera raw stuff I perform in LR.

                      So I edit in Photoshop only if there is real pixel work left to do, and then I am not quite happy because I have a 2nd file as Photoshop no longer can keep this in RAW after doing things beyond LR develop=camera raw scope.

                       

                      So LR for me is my favourite raw converter (and not really a converter, because I do not convert, I just keep the instructions within LR DB and saved to metadata). It is my favourite digital asset management tool for images. I need to long-term store 1 raw DNG file (or a proprietary raw format with a sidecar for metadata) and occasionally a PSD file in addition.

                      I can always come back and develop to a very different taste than first time or make use of better demosaic algorithms / noise reduction or whatever feature is further developed. Without any loss of image quality.

                      Print and Slideshow modules are very useful for me, too.

                       

                      Should you really have no need for a digital asset management tool, and have only a few pictures to take care of, then you could be as well equipped with PS only doing a lot of camera raw work.

                       

                      The other big difference for me is the learning curve in getting proficient to use these 2 tools: LR was very intuitive for me. In PS I am still a relative dummy.

                       

                      My advice to a newbie in both tools would rather be: if pixel-based editing deals mostly with portraits, go for Adobe Lightroom and Portrait Professional, as it is much cheaper and faster. Don't bother with PS until you should really feel unsatisfied with the tools at hand...

                      • 8. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                        john beardsworth Community Member

                        Lightroom isn't just a different Photoshop. You've also got to consider volume - the more you shoot, the less time you'll have to spend finding images and the more efficiently you'll be able to adjust and output them.

                         

                        John

                        • 9. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                          Lucien Schilling Community Member
                          function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                          Not without the develop functions.

                          Adobe RAW develops pictures using the same engine then Lightroom!

                          • 10. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                            Lucien Schilling Community Member
                            function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                            function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

                            b_gossweiler wrote:

                             

                            Lucien Schillung wrote:

                             

                            Why did I buy this software?

                            You should know, because you had the opportunity of a full function 30 day trial before purchase.

                             

                            Beat

                            I didn't do the trial. I never did with Adobe products and up to now I had no such silly question to ask! I'm using Photoshop since 2.5 (?) on the PC and I played with an earlier version on a Mac!

                             

                            I will look into the videos. Let's see if I find there the killer argument.

                            • 11. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                              john beardsworth Community Member

                              Yes, but for example does ACR have the split screen view (hit Y when you're in Develop)? Can you undo your work even years later (History panel)? Does it offer the possibility to have alternative versions of the same image without extra disc space (virtual copies)? Does it have a vast range of canned effects - presets? And so on.... LR's a much better, more efficient working environment.

                              • 12. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                Lucien Schilling Community Member

                                If you shoot RAW there are many things you should first do in Camera Raw before using genuine PS tools.

                                For developing RAW images, I suppose camera RAW and Lightroom are equivalent.

                                 

                                I can always come back and develop to a very different taste than first time or make use of better demosaic algorithms / noise reduction or whatever feature is further developed. Without any loss of image quality.

                                The same applies to Camera RAW, this isn't the killer feature!

                                 

                                have only a few pictures to take care of

                                120k Pictures. But there are some duplicates, not much because I want minimizing that. Because we need using the same picture for different applications, we tend to develop once, use multiple. But we need converting as inDesign and other applications don't use (developed) RAW files. I also do a systematic convert to (small) JPEG to allow other people to browse easyly the images.

                                • 13. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                  b_gossweiler Community Member

                                  johnbeardy wrote:

                                   

                                  Yes, but for example does ACR have the split screen view (hit Y when you're in Develop)? Can you undo your work even years later (History panel)? Does it offer the possibility to have alternative versions of the same image without extra disc space (virtual copies)? Does it have a vast range of canned effects - presets? And so on.... LR's a much better, more efficient working environment.

                                   

                                  ... and last but not least: Can you synchronize setting from one image to several others or make adjustments to many images in one go in ACR?

                                   

                                  Beat

                                  • 14. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                    john beardsworth Community Member

                                    b_gossweiler wrote:


                                    ... and last but not least: Can you synchronize setting from one image to several others or make adjustments to many images in one go in ACR?

                                     

                                    Beat

                                    Actually, Beat, you can

                                    • 16. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                      b2martin_a Community Member

                                      I use Photoshop CS5 and ACR to process all my RAW files.  I believe ACR has most if not all the capabilities of Lightroom relative to image adjustments, at least the ones I use.  What ACR and Photoshop CS5 will not do is manage a database of your images.  Lightroom requires the images be in it's library before you can work on them, this makes it a lot more rigid than Photoshop CS5 relative to how and where you store the images.  I find this a major limitation relative to how I work and after my trial period for Lightroom 3 I decided ACR was the path for me and did not purchase Lightroom.

                                      • 17. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                        homeless05 Community Member

                                        lucien, thanks for clarifying how using a single folder for your pictures in Lightroom would create issues for those programs you cited. Perhaps for us you might include sometime other program examples, external to Adobe. My sense from what you're using is that you're a professional in the photography/graphics area.  For me, I'm locked into the Adobe world, to their consumate pleasure. I use their reader, photoshop elements 8, PS-5 and Lightroom. It's hard to imagine going beyond what I'm using.  Maybe, I'm being shortsighted.

                                        • 18. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                          Michael_Flynn

                                          One word.  Non destructive editing.  Ok that's three words.

                                           

                                          The Lightroom engine and application has been designed from the ground up with Photographers in mind. While it may lack a number of features that PS offers, what it does provide is a rich and powerful application to categorize, catalog, organize and edit your images.  LR is more then just an app to edit your photos.  True ACR/Bridge/PS have over lapping functionality, but why use three distinct apps when you have a well written efficient single application that does it?

                                          • 19. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                            Lucien Schilling Community Member

                                            InDesign is inside Adobe and cannot use raw files. Except for Lightroom and Camera Raw, there is no Adobe Tool undersatnding raw files. Camera Raw is coupled to Photoshop, so I consider them as a unity, but technically, Camera Raw is a standalone product.

                                             

                                            I did photograph in raw before using Camera Raw, ie before Adobe was ready using raw files. I just used the Canon tool to convert.

                                            • 20. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                              Lucien Schilling Community Member

                                              Non destructive editing can be done in Camera Raw too. To use your data further, you need to convert in soem other format. So what can be done in Lightroom what you canot do with Photoshop? Why does Adobe sell Lightroom to Photoshop owners? Where is the comparative table showing you, when to use Photoshop and when Lightroom?

                                              • 21. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                Cornelia-I Community Member

                                                Well I think Adobe sells Lightroom to anyone willing to pay for it

                                                 

                                                To my feeling if you think of single images when comparing you might not find the killer-unique-selling-point for LR.

                                                 

                                                It is the bundle of digital asset mgmt tool together with all develop capacity (identical to camera raw) and the multiple ways of exporting/presenting.

                                                I want to store my original files only and still have full flexibility for "eternity".

                                                Any output I treat as intermediate and throw away after use, e.g. after creating the dtp-file for a foto book. I would never long-term store any jpg rendition of my raw as I can easily recreate it thanks to my presets.

                                                It optimally supports my workflow for handling large volumes of files in one go, leaving only few images to really treat individually or group-wise.

                                                Maybe very proficient PS users can achieve the same degree of automation for the same quantities of images.

                                                 

                                                So to boil it down for me: I do not convert, I just save instructions. Inside LR database. Inside xmp because I won't trust Adobe forever. Organising and further developing is seamless and I toggle back and forth between such activities whenever I use material for a specific purpose.

                                                Full flexibility at minimal storage needs in a seamless bundle.

                                                 

                                                If you are a very patient man, deal with your images "au fil de l'eau".

                                                • 22. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                  Lucien Schilling Community Member
                                                  Maybe very proficient PS users can achieve the same degree of automation for the same quantities of images.

                                                  For PS you will need to keep the PS file.

                                                   

                                                  It is the bundle of digital asset mgmt tool

                                                  May be that is the killer....

                                                  Well I think Adobe sells Lightroom to anyone willing to pay for it

                                                  Correct! Was this the correct answer? Or was it 42?

                                                  • 23. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                    sacannie1

                                                    This is not an answer...but more questions along the same line:

                                                    1) IF I HAVE PSE9, CS5 AND FEEL COMFORTABLE USING ACR, WHAT DOES LR GET ME?

                                                    2) I HAVE CATALOGUED OVER 14,000 PHOTOS IN PSE.  IF I START USING LR FOR BASIC MY PHOTO EDITS, TAGGING AND ALBUM SORTING , WILL I THEREAFTER HAVE TWO DIFFERENT ALBUM SYSTEMS, OR ONE?  What I have ben doing--which is slow and inefficient, i am sure-- is opeing ikes in ACR,then doing bug edits in PS, tensaving, then getting those iles into PSE as my last step.. This is exhausting!!! WILL I DESTROY THE FILE CONNECTIONS MADE IN PSE IF I PULL A FILE USING PSE, EDIT IT IN LR, THEN SAVE IT VIA LR? I'd be sick if I lost all those PSE file associations bc I made a photobook in LR and did some minor edits....

                                                     

                                                    HELP, 'DOBE BROTHERS (& SISTERS)!

                                                    • 24. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                      Cornelia-I Community Member

                                                      Hi sacannie1,

                                                       

                                                      LR is an alternative way to catalog and organize images.

                                                      I am not very familiar with PSE9 - but I would assume that the cataloging part of it is Bridge, whereas PS Elements is a light-weight competitor of Photoshop CS5.

                                                       

                                                      With LR you would first just save your images somewhere in storage buckets - just keep the folders your originals are currently in.

                                                      When you have saved your ratings and labels and keywords from PSE-Bridge into the xmp-part of the image file, LR will read that when it imports the images.

                                                      *Importing images* into LR just means it creates one record inside its database=catalog, pointing to your image file. It will read anything it can understand what is inside the image-xmp, so it should get the results of your previous work.

                                                       

                                                      From then on you have no motivation to ever use PSE-Bridge or ACR again. You use LR.

                                                       

                                                      If you find major flaws on pixels in your images, you will need to edit it inside CS5 (or PSE - image editing). This will create a new file, and LR will have a record pointing to this new *.PSD. If LR's adjustment brush is sufficient, this will not create a new image. It will just enrich the record for that image with the instructions for this local correction.

                                                      If you need a JPG or TIFF as resulting output you export from LR, which will create new adjusted files.

                                                      Your originals are never touched by LR (other than the xmp-part if you want Lr to write back into it).

                                                      So you do not "save images" in LR: you either save LR's interpretation instructions inside xmp, or you create new files by exporting.

                                                      Saving inside LR's database is automatic.

                                                       

                                                      Your PSE results will not be touched by using LR. So you could abandon LR and continue with PSE-Bridge should you desire to do so. Which I would bet against once you get the knack of LR.

                                                       

                                                      Your current workflow needs double storage space: your original images, plus the edited PSE-results, which are now converted.

                                                      LR needs your original images, plus a much smaller database (1 GB for ca. 100'000 images) plus storage space for previews if you want them created not on the fly ( I dedicate a generous size, 85 GB). Then I can present them even though the image files are offline (on a NAS) while I am traveling with my laptop.

                                                       

                                                      No way to achieve this with PSE-Bridge.

                                                      Cornelia

                                                      • 25. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                        sacannie1 Community Member

                                                        Thanks so much for your excellent answer!  I may give LR a shot, given your guidance.  Thanks again for taking the time to get this info to me.

                                                        • 26. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                          areohbee Community Member

                                                          I'm a Lightroom user who is hopelessly hooked into it but wonders if he should have stuck with Bridge/Photoshop/ACR.

                                                           

                                                          I'm hooked due to dependence on Lightroom plugins.

                                                           

                                                          But, I really don't *need* the database features much over what Bridge can do. As long as you only do the same things in Photoshop as you can do in Lightroom (read: ACR only), you don't even have to save a Photoshop file to re-work on the image with Photoshop/ACR (you just save xmp metadata). In Photoshop, if you decide to use content-aware fill or layers - you just do it - then you pay the big storage penalty, but you'd have to pay that if you were a Lightroom user too, doing an external edit, but there is a strange psychological hurdle for me going outside Lightroom for external editing.

                                                           

                                                          There are no publish services in Photoshop/ACR, which I find very helpful in Lr, but a Bridge script could implement a publish service, to some extent - dunno what's available so far along those lines...

                                                           

                                                          There are maps books slideshow print and web modules too, but I never use them.

                                                           

                                                          Lightroom has great potential, but Adobe has slighted it. Had they beefed up the Library module in Lr4 (it has glaring and aggravating problems, like inability to handle spaces in metadata searches - all solved for me via plugins, but still...), and made the slideshow useable for me..., I might be singing a different tune. There were tons and tons of great ideas and bugs identified by users, but *very* few of the ideas have seen the light(room), and 99% of the bugs remain unfixed...

                                                           

                                                          If they come out with a killer SDK come Lr4.2, I may be singing a different tune, but I've the feeling the SDK is being slighted now too.

                                                           

                                                          Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I think Lightroom's biggest draw is that it looks nicer than Bridge/Photoshop/ACR (the UI is more aesthetically pleasing) - and looks matter...

                                                           

                                                          How I feel about Lightroom depends on the day - if I switched back to Bridge now, I may return to Lightroom with my tail between my legs, humbled... - dunno.

                                                           

                                                          Cheers,

                                                          Rob

                                                          • 27. Re: Why should I acquire Lightroom when I have PhotoShop.
                                                            trshaner Community Member

                                                            Lucien Schillung wrote:

                                                             

                                                            I have both, I'm used to Photoshop but not to Lightroom. Because I know Photoshop, I'm using Photoshop to do the work.

                                                             

                                                            I have a few questions that might that might help us provide more definitive answers:

                                                             

                                                            What specifically motivated you to buy Lightroom?

                                                            Do you routinely need to process 100s or more digital camera images in a time-efficient manner?

                                                            What work have you actually done inside Lightroom?

                                                             

                                                            Lucien Schillung wrote:

                                                             

                                                            But there need to be somewhere some manipulations that should be better done in Lightroom!

                                                             

                                                            So may be someone can enlighten me.

                                                             

                                                            I started using Photoshop in 1996 for processing scanned 35mm film images and currently use CS5 Design Standard. I bought my first digital camera in 2004 and quickly realized processing, cataloging, and using multiple 1,000s of images was getting out of control.

                                                             

                                                            When Lightroom was first launched in January 2007 it appeared to be the perfect tool for my digital camera images. To date the biggest benefit to me from using Lightroom has been the time (and aggravation) saved, period!

                                                             

                                                            IMHO – You can process your digital camera raw images using ACR, Bridge, Photoshop, and the other Creative Suite apps, but your workflow will never be as organized or time-efficient as using Lightroom. I can tell you that it took me about a year before I felt reasonably comfortable using Lightroom....old habits die hard. I still use Photoshop frequently from inside Lighroom and find the two apps work togther very well.