Lightroom / ACR vs. photoshop

[DanK]

I finally got around to finishing watching Jeff Schewe's first video on photopxl about processing in Lightroom. He made a passing comment that he often moves an image into Photoshop to finish it, but he made two comments about things that are better on LR/ACR. First, he said that the histogram in Photoshop is very old technology and is inferior to the one in LR/ACR. Second, he said that softproofing is better in LR than in Photoshop.

The latter surprised me. I've always seen the debate about printing from LR and Photoshop couched as an argument about the extent to which LR is as good as Photoshop. This is the first time I recall an expert maintaining that in one respect, LR is superior.

[xpatUSA]

I finally got around to finishing watching Jeff Schewe's first video on photopxl about processing in Lightroom. He made a passing comment that he often moves an image into Photoshop to finish it, but he made two comments about things that are better on LR/ACR. First, he said that the histogram in Photoshop is very old technology and is inferior to the one in LR/ACR. Second, <>

I don't use Adobe, Dan, but nevertheless I'm curious about their histogram rendering options. A quick look on-line always seems to show just three channels + luminosity (or intensity?) with linear scaling for the level and count axes. Can it do other stuff, e.g log scaling, show max/min/mean/sd and so forth?

Did he qualify "better" or "inferior"?

[LenR]

Dan, interesting comments. For my part I find LR's print module to be quite versatile and use it for all my printing.

[DanK]

I don't use Adobe, Dan, but nevertheless I'm curious about their histogram rendering options. A quick look on-line always seems to show just three channels + luminosity (or intensity?) with linear scaling for the level and count axes. Can it do other stuff, e.g log scaling, show max/min/mean/sd and so forth?

Did he qualify "better" or "inferior"?

I don't think he meant better in the sense of “can report in more ways.” From the context, I think he was referring to the accuracy of the display as an estimate of the data in the file.


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[DanK]

Dan, interesting comments. For my part I find LR's print module to be quite versatile and use it for all my printing.

I use it for all of my printing. I find it very powerful, and the results have been generally excellent. It requires trusting their output sharpening algorithms rather than doing what Photoshop requires--resizing the image and sharpening manually--but I find that that "standard" output sharpening has been consistently very good.

[Manfred M]

Dan - I watched Jeff's Schewe's first broadcast live and caught those points but would suggest that while he is correct his comments need a bit of clarification as the benefits are not necessarily going to be there for all photographers.

Let's start with the comments on the histogram - yes Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) have improved algorithms, but only in so far as it changes the way one can make adjustments, rather than in how things are displayed. I don't this functionality in my workflow as I find I use curves for this type of work, which gives me far more meaningful control.

When it comes to soft proofing, I tend to have a similar view. The one area where Lightroom shines is that it allows the user to open both the original and the soft proof versions of the image side by side and the visual guide it provides is very useful, within the limits of what soft proofing does. The problem I have with soft proofing is that it is still and emulation and I make my call on the my tweaks based on test prints, which is far more accurate. If soft proofing had the capabilities for me to see what the image looks like under specific lighting conditions (intensity + colour temperature), now that would be useful.

P.S. Jeff had a go at a couple of my images during the second session (which I unfortunately missed) from around 59 minutes 26 seconds to 102 minutes 44 seconds. I prefer my treatment of the first image but am going to revisit the second one and have another go at it.