I started off in Elements, and it has carried me well for the first two years of my photography. I have taken a couple of community college classes, and now have Lightroom on order. This progression has worked well for me. I think I would have gotten lost in the full version of Photoshop right off the bat.
Lightroom seriously is the best for a beginner, IMHO. It is setup PURELY for editing photos, Photoshop has a lot of extra crap of which I won't use 90% of. But LR2 is a great program, I like how it exports the files exactly at the exact size I specify and can create web pages like this in seconds AND upload it for me -
Roy Pertchik wrote:
Very interesting! That's good news. Same controls?
How is Bridge?
Bridge uses ACR, the same as PS CS4. It is simply a different interface for browsing media. Once you double-click or open an image you are in ACR. You can customize the interface on Bridge quite nicely, however, i.e. to view all metadata, or a filmstrip view, or anything you want in most any combination.
My work flow used to be Bridge > ACR > Photoshop, but for weddings I have strictly gone Lightroom. I used Aperture v1 for a year or so (never really went back to try v2), but have gone back to Adobe.
irieweasel wrote:
Bridge uses ACR, the same as PS CS4. It is simply a different interface for browsing media. Once you double-click or open an image you are in ACR. You can customize the interface on Bridge quite nicely, however, i.e. to view all metadata, or a filmstrip view, or anything you want in most any combination.
I think he meant Bridge as against the Lightroom library
Thanks for the link, Paul. I looked at the pallets for RAW in Elements... they seem somewhat simplified compared to the pallets in Lightroom, but I may not be seeing everything that's there. I also found a link to a tutorial on the RAW converter in CS4
The "basic" panel is exactly like the old RSE pallet, which I know Adobe bought and incorporated into their software. The CS4 tutorial skips over the other RAW pallets, but flashes some of them briefly. I stoped the video and inspected... they seem somewhat abreviated from the Lightroom pallets, too, but I'm not certain of that... For example, the curves pallet in Lightroom has graphics that show what regions of the curve are available for editing by dragging, and over what range of values, where the curves pallet in CS4 seems more like a conventional curves pallet. Again, I can't tell for sure because the tutorial skipd past these other pallets.
It seems, however, that it would make sense for marketing if Lightroom had more sophisticated RAW conversion than CS4, just as Lightroom has more sophisticated file management than Bridge. I know they want you to buy both... Gary Peterson replied to me (above) that "the RAW converters are the same", which could mean the engine, or also the tool set...
Lightroom is one of the easiest organizing and editing programs to use. With very little instruction, you can be importing, sorting, correcting and printing. The other thing about LR is that it is not intimidating. If you have it already, then great - spend some time with it and you will be surprised how well it handles what photographers need to do.
I've used Photoshop from v1.1 upward and paid the upgrade fee for most versions between v2.5 and CS3, but since I purchased Lightroom, I probably use that alone for 98% of my photo editing.
DPP is free, produces nice results and is certainly worth familiarising yourself with, but the editing and organisational capabilities of Lightroom have radically reduced amount of time I spend in PP.
Sorry, my misunderstanding... I use Bridge as more of a media viewer rather than an archival library. I assume by library you mean to do tasks such as tag your photos with metadata, search for them, etc. Here's a screen shot (below) so you can see the interface. Photos edited in ACR by default maintain the edits in sidecar .xmp files. You can add/edit/tag metadata, and search across anything in your "library" (under the filter tab lab at left) similar to how you do in Lightroom.
I will note that Bridge seems to parse files faster, i.e. load them in, and get them out if running through an image processor such as PS CS4. That could, however, be a PS CS4 being speedier than Lightroom thing at that task. Usually I observe the speed diff when batch converting large sets (1000-2000+) photos from RAW to JPEG ± creating a copy of and resizing said JPEGs. Hope that better gets at your question.
Thanks for the clarification. Seems very capable, and similar in concept to Lightroom2. So, at this point, I think Lightroom2 has a little more power in the RAW pallets, and perhaps in the Librarying and presentation formatting (slide shows, html shows etc.), but CS4 is no slouch in these departments. That means there are a few strategies, depending on what your needs are (listed in order of escalating cost):
1) Just Lightroom2 for the most advanced RAW editing (from adobe), and archiving and pretty good presentaion formatting for web and so forth.
2) Just CS4 for good RAW editing and archieving, and the ultimate in image maniplation after RAW conversion, but limited formatting for slide shows etc.
3) Lightroom2 for what it has, plus an additional piece of software, like Elements, or an older version of PS, for image manipulation.
4) Lightroom2 plus CS4 for the most of the most from Adobe.
you can't buy CS3 new and it won't open your Raw 50D files anyway, you must have CS4 or lightroom with Elements 7 to edit the raw... $ Canons software works fine and Free, Elements works fine $79, Lightroom at $300 SC4 At $700....daaah!! where do I start?
Lots of options so start small, you can always step up as you need to have more... Nothing is more of a waste that buying CS4 and only using the levels command!!! I teach it here and half of the people should be back on elements 7..
Don
Tom Kelley wrote:
I will be getting my 50D tomorrow and am wondering , for a newbie to post processing, which photoshop do you recommend? I've been doing some reading and it sounds like maybe CS3 would be a good starter. If so, can i download it for free, or do i have to buy it?
I may be mistaken, but doesn't Canon supply their DPP as a part of the camera software package ?
If that is not available, I have found the Elements to offer more features than I really need. However, I do very little PP, if any.
Don Price wrote:
you can't buy CS3 new and it won't open your Raw 50D files anyway, you must have CS4 or lightroom with Elements 7 to edit the raw... $ Canons software works fine and Free, Elements works fine $79, Lightroom at $300 SC4 At $700....daaah!! where do I start?
Lots of options so start small, you can always step up as you need to have more... Nothing is more of a waste that buying CS4 and only using the levels command!!! I teach it here and half of the people should be back on elements 7..
Don
Actually, CS3's last Raw converter update included the 50D, and you don't need Lightroon AND elements to edit the Raw, just Lightroom is fine.
And a good place to start is downloading the free trial of Lightroom 2.
RobertLynn wrote:
I use CS2, I figure I am not buying another version until I learn this one.
Dude CS2 s*^ked.....CS4 is so much better....not even in the same league. CS3 isn`t bad ether. They are both so much better then 2......you have to upgrade....just go without eating for a while. To the OP......start with elements it will get you used to how photoshop works and you can find it on sale for less than 75 bucks if you look...........Peter
If you are going to look at Lightroom may I suggest also looking at JuliAnne kost's tutorials.
Very comprehensive, her name is on the start up screen of the program so she knows what she is on about.
There are items in the tutorials that I don't think I would have found poking around the trial version on my own.
I'll just say that a friend of mine asked the same question, I told him PS or GIMP, but he went online and here and elsewhere found similar advise as the OP is getting here, he ignored me and bought Elements... used it for 3 months before realizing that he had made a mistake and went out and purchased the full version of PS. Granted it was only $80 that he wasted, but $80 isn't nothing. Also, even though he was just starting out, he took it seriously and wanted to be able to get the best out of his images... not everyone cares that much... FWIW.
Don Price wrote:
you can't buy CS3 new and it won't open your Raw 50D files anyway, you must have CS4 or lightroom with Elements 7 to edit the raw... $ Canons software works fine and Free, Elements works fine $79, Lightroom at $300 SC4 At $700....daaah!! where do I start?
Lots of options so start small, you can always step up as you need to have more... Nothing is more of a waste that buying CS4 and only using the levels command!!! I teach it here and half of the people should be back on elements 7..
Don
Agree 100%. I use PSE 6 (on an iMac) and it does everything I want, even though I have CS3 on my PC. The latest version of Canon's own DPP is also very good and I use that for initial cropping and converting to TIFFs. I think that there is a real danger of a beginner getting "turned off" by diving straight into CS3 or 4 - much of the extra capability is for graphic designers, not photographers.
If the OP starts with Elements and then decides to move up to CS he hasn't exactly wasted a great deal of cash. With some of the money saved buy a noise reduction plug-in (I use Neat Image) and, especially, a monitor calibrator (Spyder 3 Elite).
skibum5 wrote:
what did you hear about CS4?
It seems same or better to me (direct built-in ACR support for the newest cams, much better contrast tool, etc.)
check the web it is full of comments about problems with CS4. For you it is fine but for many others it might not be and there were problems.
Glad it works for you!
Dan
