Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Lightroom?

[Panama Hat & Camera]

I have Elements 11 and Lightroom 5 and I have the Scott Kelby books about these softwares. I know very little about Elements and nothing about Lightroom. Which are their uses? They are best suited for which applications? Where I can find basic informations about these softwares before begining to read the books?
Best regards,
Antonio.

[russellsnr]

http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html#

http://www.lightroomforums.net/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYcScc-XWoc

Russ

[inkista]

... I know very little about Elements and nothing about Lightroom. Which are their uses? They are best suited for which applications? ...

Lightroom is a RAW conversion tool. It's best used for basic photo cataloging, editing (as in select/reject), and whole-image adjustments (e.g., white balance, contrast, exposure).

Elements is the home version of Photoshop, and is better used for more complex processing of images that may involve compositing with masks and layers, or pixel-level manipulation. Nearly everything you can do in Lightroom can also be done with Elements in combination with Adobe Bridge; it's just that Lightroom has a single interface and is designed more to ease the workflow.

Many people only ever need one or the other, but having both in combination gives you the whole enchilada.

Where I can find basic informations about these softwares before [beginning] to read the books?...

The Adobe TV website has a ton of learning videos, if that's easier for you than reading from books. You might want to look at the Getting Started with Lightroom 5 series.

[pnodrog]

They should work together. Use Lightroom for downloading, organising and cataloging your photographs. Will allow you to do searches based on keywords/dates/attributes etc. Most photographs can be edited in lightroom but if you want to do some cloning, add lettering or make a montage etc you can go "ctrl E" from lightroom and if you have set up Elements as the editor it will bring the photo up in Elements for further editing. When you have finished your edit in Elements it can then transfer the edited photo back to lightroom. It is well worthwhile struggling with the learning curve.

[Codebreaker]

There is a degree of overlap between the two. Both will allow you to manage your collection of images but you should choose only one and in my opinion this should be Lightroom. The reason for choosing just one is that any changes you make to your organisation of images e.g. Folder Locations, Keywords, Collections etc are not automatically copied from one program to the other.

Beyond image management you could simplistically view Lightroom as being the program in which you 'process' your images i.e make adjustments to the underlying appearance e.g exposure, saturation, sharpness etc; while Elements allows for more creative 'editing' of images e.g composites, framing, special effects etc.

Lightroom's real strength, in my opinion is processing of Raw images. It allows for a very efficient workflow. And as others have indicated you can pass images from Lightroom to Elements and have the results of your creativity there appear back in Lightroom.

[Shadowman]

I think you should at least read Kelby's Quick Q & A near the front of his Elements book and that should be enough to get you going. When I first searched for an Elements tutorial the bookstore clerk read a line from the Kelby website, the line went:

"Finally, a Photoshop book that is written expressly for professional photographers and hi-end serious amateurs that doesn't talk about F-stops, exposures, and how to frame a shot (you know all that stuff already--if you don't¿I hate to say it, but this isn't for you). "

[davidedric]

I have both. I have had Elements for a long time, and Lightroom for three years or so. (I also have Photoshop, since I bought the photographer's CC offering).

The key to thinking about Lightroom is that it is a workflow application. It allows you to manage your photos, process them, Print them and publish them - all within one product with a consistent interface throughout.

The controls and workflow are exactly the same, whether you are working with jpegs, RAW or a mixture.

As I've got to know the product better, and Lightroom itself has developed, I can do almost everything I need in Lightroom. It does not just offer global adjustments. Whilst it does not have the sophisticated mapping of the Photoshop products, a lot can be accomplished with its filters and brushes.

There are some things it doesn't do. If you want to combine images (other than hdr and panorama) it doesn't. Nor is it the place to create special effects.

One slightly arcane point. Lightroom is not a RAW converter, it is a RAW interpreter. Your RAW images stay RAW until you move them outside of Lightroom.

So it depends on your needs. If Lightroom can do what you need, I can pretty much guarantee you can do it more quickly in Lightroom than in Elements.

Finally, sorry about the long post, if I wanted something to do the sorts of things Elements can, but didn't want to tackle Photoshop, I would choose On1's Photo 10 over Elements every time (actually, I have!)

If you want want to get a quick start with Lightroom, try Victoria Bampton's free quick start guide: http://www.lightroomqueen.com

Cheers,

Dave

[mknittle]

If you are like me you will learn by doing. as far as learning Elements was more intuitive for me than Lightroom.

I get the little post it page tabs and make "quick references." on my books. they can also easily be removed if necessary.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/product...able-Tabs-1-x/

[dennybeall]

If I was buying now I'd just get the Lightroom/Photoshop deal for 10 bucks a month and not need the Elements which is a basic version of Photoshop. If I already had Lightroom I'd buy Elements but then eventually would be frustrated and want more power, ala Photoshop.

[zen]

I am a long time Elements user, going from version 7 to 11 to 14, and have found that I can do very nearly everything in Elements [PSE] that others talk about in Lightroom [LR]. Nevertheless, recently members of my camera club "shamed me" into trying LR, which I did via the PS/LR Cloud package. I got it at a bargain price of $100 for the first year. Not much different in it, EXCEPT that I can now shoot and process RAW images, whereas before, I was limited almost exclusively to JPEG. With both LR and PSE now in hand, and with the capability of processing RAW, I've found that many of my images come out better, especially when the ambient light is less than satisfactory . For me, the combination of both fills the bill nicely, and I'd recommend it to you.

BTW, one of the benes of the Cloud pkg is that as soon as updates are developed, you get them automatically. In the 10 months I've had it, I've already gotten two updates, so not so bad. Everybody was upset when Adobe went to the Cloud "rental" system, but it turns out to be not as bad as everyone, including me, originally thought.

Good luck in your decision making and happy shooting!

Zen

[Shadowman]

I am a long time Elements user, going from version 7 to 11 to 14, and have found that I can do very nearly everything in Elements [PSE] that others talk about in Lightroom [LR]. Nevertheless, recently members of my camera club "shamed me" into trying LR, which I did via the PS/LR Cloud package. I got it at a bargain price of $100 for the first year. Not much different in it, EXCEPT that I can now shoot and process RAW images, whereas before, I was limited almost exclusively to JPEG. With both LR and PSE now in hand, and with the capability of processing RAW, I've found that many of my images come out better, especially when the ambient light is less than satisfactory . For me, the combination of both fills the bill nicely, and I'd recommend it to you.

BTW, one of the benes of the Cloud pkg is that as soon as updates are developed, you get them automatically. In the 10 months I've had it, I've already gotten two updates, so not so bad. Everybody was upset when Adobe went to the Cloud "rental" system, but it turns out to be not as bad as everyone, including me, originally thought.

Good luck in your decision making and happy shooting!

Zen

Hi Zen,

Was your camera not supported by Elements that you couldn't process RAW? Was it ever compatible with the earlier versions? I shoot Nikon and they have a free converter (ViewNX2) that I used whenever necessary, my only concern with ViewNX2 was that it didn't have noise reduction, so there was a lot of back and forth between programs. When I upgraded my camera Elements didn't support RAW version so I had to either use ViewNX2 or use a DNG converter.

[davidedric]

Maybe the difference is that in Elements you have to go first into the cut down version of ACR, and then into Elements "proper". Not everyone knows that you can open a jpeg in ACR, since the default is to go straight to Elements.

In any event, that requires learning two interfaces rather than the one in Lightroom - it's a debate that runs and runs.

Dave

[Geoff F]

Neither for me, Antonio.

I tried Elements but it is far to Elemental for me. Lightroom came with Adobe CC but I have never seen the point of it, except perhaps for cataloguing but I can do that with Bridge. And I certainly wouldn't want any software without the ability to work with layers and masks. But it depends on exactly what you want to do in the way of editing.

There is a lot in the CC package which I don't use but it makes a good job of the bits which I do require.

So, for me, if I wasn't using CC or one of the later CS versions, I would look elsewhere for my software. Before CS/CC I used Serif Photo Plus with Raw Therapee for the initial Raw editing and it worked fairly well. Several other makes of reasonable quality software though, and many people find Gimp to be very productive once you get used to it.

[davidedric]

but I can do that with Bridge.

No, Geoff, you can't.

You may not need or want Lightroom's image management facilities, but the combinations of Smart and regular Collections, Virtual Copies, Snaphots, Tagging, key wording and so on leave Bridge in the dust.

Dave

[Manfred M]

No, Geoff, you can't.

You may not need or want Lightroom's image management facilities, but the combinations of Smart and regular Collections, Virtual Copies, Snaphots, Tagging, key wording and so on leave Bridge in the dust.

Dave

On the other hand, the default is the LR catalog, which has its own set of headaches. I prefer Bridge / ACR to Lightroom as well.

[davidedric]

Sure Manfred, you and many others, for whatever reasons. I think you need either to embrace the Catalogue and the workflow that goes with, or avoid it altogether. I suppose you could do your image management in Lightroom and your editing elsewhere, but that feels like a perverse position.

However, if someone doesnt know either product, I think Geoff's comment is misleading, since it implies an equivalence between Bridge and Lightroom for image management.

I expect he meant something like "I can do in Bridge anything I think I might want to do in Lightroom, for image management" but it would have been very clumsy.

Dave

[Geoff F]

Bridge has never left me wanting more; and it is so easy, unlike Lightroom which scares me away before I even attempt to use it.

[davidedric]

Pax

[Cantab]

Interestingly (or perhaps not!), I could never figure out how to use Bridge but have subsequently been a happy user of Lightroom for cataloguing and basic editing for several years (and Photoshop for more complex editing).

[rpcrowe]

I also prefer the Bridge/ACR combination for working with my imagery. I am sure that it is operator error but, I tend to "lose" images when working with Lightroom.