Post Edit Software Preferences

Hi, I'm a beginner and want to get into photography. Most of my underwater shots were shot JPEG, but I have recently upgraded my camera and can't wait to use it and shoot RAW.. Is it necessary to have BOTH lightroom and photoshop. I have photoshop and have been trying to learn it which will take me a while... do people then normally export to photoshop?? Should I splurge and purchase that too when the time comes? Any thoughts/preferences? Thanks!

Also what about video? I have adobe premiere elements which I like a lot but do people do color corrections before piecing together videos??

Hi.... Let me share how NOT to do it! ;-)

I use Photoshop almost exclusively. I'm reasonably capable with it. Because a certain amount of my stuff ends up in print, I need to be able to convert to the CMYK colour space. I don't think that Lightroom does, although I am likely wrong about that.

Where Lightroom shines is when you use it as a workflow... a way to sort, catelogue and edit your images. It sames tons of disk space. The most simple example of the benefit of it has to do with watermarks. The way I do things... I have a RAW file, I have an RGB jpg. In many cases, I have another jpeg with my watermark. In a tiny number of cases, I also have a LARGE CMYK tiff which is going to a magazine, or is being used to produce a calendar or possibly a poster. And then I wonder why I never have disk space!

The only time I use Lightroom honestly is to "bulk watermark" a bunch of images.

I think you can get by fine with Photoshop and some decent organizational discipline. However, I don't think you could get by with only Lightroom as it is somewhat limited in it's editing options...

Now if someone who actually knows something about Lightroom would care to correct everything I just said, that would be fine.

Also... Photoshop is expensive. Lightroom is cheap. Photoshop Elements does about 98% of everything you need in Photoshop, as long as you don't care about CMYK

Thanks so much for your input! Elements seems like a good option! I would like to just learn one application really well then be overwhelmed by both.

Let me chip-in too with a slightly different view.

I'm selling things which, presumably, end up in print but maybe not to the volume of Stoo.

I use Lightroom (LR) for almost everything. "Almost" because there are times when I find Photoshop (PS) better for removing larger unwanted elements in a picture. But in general, from starting with a RAW file to exporting to a JPG to send out for sale, LR does the trick for me.

I find LR intuitive with straightforward command structures, menus and sliders. My view is that PS is superb for the graphic designer - but for the photographer, LR is the way to go.

But, as Stoo finds (and I'm sure other Wetpixelers), if you are a whizz at PS, it is fantastic - no doubt at all. But there is a huge learning curve.

One other thought is that Adobe are doing their Creative Photo package (or some such name) where you get both LR and PS for about $10 a month (not sure of the exact price in the US). You get all the updates automatically - and you have the advantage of having PS on hand if you really need it. I don't think, but I'm not sure, that the package is available with Elements. I've been using this deal for about 18 months and am very happy with it.

I completely agree with Tim!

Adobe's Creative Cloud for Photographers plan offers both Lightroom and Photoshop at an attractive monthly rate. I would suggest that this is the best way forward for photographers now. You just have to get your head around "renting" software as opposed to owning it.

If you are looking for an app for photography, Lightroom is pretty much the way to go. If offers a more intuitive and streamlined workflow for image ingesting, processing, editing and exporting. Photoshop is an amazing graphics package that does an amazing number of things very well, but as a photographer, it has a huge number of functions atet you will need use.

The Elements packages are limiting, as their emphasis on "templates" doe not really suit underwater imaging.

There are a bunch of online resources for Lightroom and a number of excellent tutorial/seminar options for learning about it.

Adam

Thanks for all of your kind replies- Since I have lightroom already I will start with that and then look into photoshop, esp if its on a monthly basis when I have photos to work on.

When you have a moment, check out Lightroom Killer Tips and Lightroom Queen. Both very helpful Lightroom sites.

I recently came across an inexpensive alternative to Adobe for processing images. It's called Affinity Photo. I learned of it in a professional video editing forum where they were looking for something without Adobe's high subscription prices. It was originally released for MAC, but released a Windows version in December. Introductory price of $39.99. Interface and controls similar to Lightroom. I'll admit I haven't spent a whole lot of time using it, but at that price, it's worth a look. https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo

Bob W

 

When you have a moment, check out Lightroom Killer Tips and Lightroom Queen. Both very helpful Lightroom sites.[/quote

 

Thanks ive been looking for videos or books on utilizing lightroom!

Hi, I'm a beginner and want to get into photography. Most of my underwater shots were shot JPEG, but I have recently upgraded my camera and can't wait to use it and shoot RAW.. Is it necessary to have BOTH lightroom and photoshop. I have photoshop and have been trying to learn it which will take me a while... do people then normally export to photoshop?? Should I splurge and purchase that too when the time comes? Any thoughts/preferences? Thanks!

 

Also what about video? I have adobe premiere elements which I like a lot but do people do color corrections before piecing together videos??

I don't currently have Photoshop, but then I didn't want to go through the learning curve with it either. (Used it a fair amount in the past, but never mastered it).

I used to use 'best of breed' software, meaning using Canon DPP for shots from my Canon point-n-shoot, plus Playstation Memory (or whatever it's called) for my Sony RX100 shots, and Nikon's Capture NX2 for my Nikon shots. And DownloaderPro for downloading images, plus tried IDImager as a database manager, and various output software.

It just got to be too much of a pain when I went on vacation and had shots from multiple different camera brands. I finally just decided to go with Lightroom and try to figure out what was needed to get it to equal at least Capture NX2 for my Nikon shots. And I was very much interested in using it for a database manager as well.

It's worked out just fine. Even more so since Capture NX2 went obsolete and was replaced with the (even more terrible) Capture NXi. It's worked fine with RAW files from all three brands, though I miss the U-point technology from Capture NX2.

It does not do anything with video files though, so no help there. It's also kind of clunky for moving folders of images around, which is a pain for me. I download to a temp folder structure, rate and cull images, and then move the folder to a final location. The file handling interface isn't very handy for that.

But it has all the features I need, and works pretty fast.

I started with Photoshop too but appeared to be a bit difficult to use. So I looked for an alternative and came across Luminar https://macphun.com/luminar. Since you already have LR you can use this photo editor as a plugin. From time to time they have special offers, but you can download a free trial to get an idea how it works.