Lighthouse or photoshop with lighthouse

Trying to decide whether to buy lighthouse or photoshop with lighthouse or something else.

I am new to this site. Been taking u/w photos for several yrs and slowly getting better for the most part. Not done much with working with photos after taking them other than cropping for the most part.

Thinking of getting some software and working with some of them, learning how that all works, etc.

I have taken all JPEG photos so far but am thinking of starting to take RAW format. Never worked with photoshop except for photoshop elements which is pretty basic.

I am not driving at the pro market, just an AM. trying to upgrade some photo's and have some fun.

Will photoshop be too much of a learning curve? Seems like it could be based on others comments I have read on this website. I lighthouse enough for what I am after?

Major points to improve on some photos:

prior to using off camera flash, took some nice photos with backscatter. would like to try and eliminate the

backscatter if that is possible/practical

Some photos have either over exposed light sections or under exposed dark sections and would like to work on those.

Is lighthouse sufficient for this type of work? Is something else better?

Using a pentium 4 based computer with plenty of hard drive, running 512 ram now but likely to upgrade to 1gig as needed. I am reasonably sufficient at microsoft programs and some other software but not a computer expert.

thanks for any feedback.

There have been a bunch of threads on this if you search, but to cut to the chase.

I would download a Lightroom (not house) trial. From what you say, it should do pretty much everything you need and be a better cataloging tool than Photoshop / Bridge. If you like it, then buy it.

Then if you need more later you can always add Photoshop

I've just started using Lightroom on RAW files (was using Elements on jpgs before), and am very impressed with the program. The learning curve is a little bit steeper than Elements, but once you get the hang of it you will really enjoy it. The more I use and learn it, the more I like it. You will most likely need to upgrade your RAM, Adobe recommends 1G for Lightroom. I am running it on my MacBook with (newly upgraded yay!) 2G of RAM and my desktop PC with 1G of RAM and it runs great on both.

To help with the learning curve I also picked up:

http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Ligh...7923&sr=8-4

which has been a tremendous help for me as a beginner...

Enjoy!

thanks for the info. and feedback.

I tried the 30 day free trial on Lightroom and love using it. So far, I have managed well without a book however, I will obtain one in the future. I placed my order for lightroom the other day.

My workflow...

1. Import pictures from camera using Adobe Lightroom

2. Edit some in Nikon Capture NX - save as JPEG

3. Edit (JPEG) some more in Adobe Photoshop and publish (maybe again using Lightroom)

Editing is possible within Lightroom and Lightroom can pass off the RAW file to Photoshop (as a TIFF) or the RAW can just be opened in PHotoshop in the first place. I do use a Nikon DSLR so there may be some reason to have Capture NX and to use it as above...

Lightroom is great for organization (front end) but also is nice for generating slideshows and web pages of finished pictures (back end)

1 GB RAM, 5400 RPM hard drive and a CLEAN O/S install (for us Windows users )