dmacmillan Offline Upload & Sell: On
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miketerror wrote:
I'm sure LR and CS5 are both different tools of the photographer for different uses, but can someone explain when is the time to use LR and when is the time to use Photoshop?
Here's how I use them.
I use LR to organize my photos. I place my CF card in the computer and import the images. I use it as my virtual "light table", going through the images marking and categorizing them. We were just visited by my wife's step niece, her husband and their twin 5 month old boys. I photographed it like an event. I edited most images in LR for 4x6 prints and posting on the web. There were series of photos taken under the same conditions. I edited the first, fixing WB, contrast and the like. I then copied those settings and applied them to the rest of the photos in the series. If needed, I'd then edit individual photos to tweak.
There were a few photographs from that visit that were special, especially photos of the great-grandfather and great-grandmother holding the boys. For them, I chose "Edit In" and moved them up to PS. LR automatically makes a virtual copy when opening up PS. I then used NIK Software's Viveza to do a little cosmetic retouching, since the great-grandparents are in their '80's. Viveza has dynamic skin retouching that I used judiciously. You wouldn't know they were touched unless you saw the originals. Also, I had a few cute photos of the twins with their mom and dad. They were taken in mixed lighting. Viveza has control points that allowed me to easily balance out the light.
I just got a new Canon 5D II and have been experimenting with combined photos. They use the term "HDR", but I'm looking for a look that's more natural than what I associate with HDR. The HDR in PS does a good job of combining images. I save the result, then import the file back into LR.
I need to do more testing, but when I was using PS4 I was getting better printing results from LR3. I've now upgraded to PS6 and LR4. I need to try printing from PS6. The nice thing about LR4 is you can soft proof and you can also make density and contrast adjustments.
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