Do i need lightroom?

Oldaker

Hello all,
Just was wondering what everyone uses lightroom for?
I currently use Photoshop cs4, would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

arodney

Oldaker wrote:

Hello all,
Just was wondering what everyone uses lightroom for?
I currently use Photoshop cs4, would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

Used for organizing all images (DAM)
Used for all Raw processing
Used to build web galleries.
Used for all printing (the print module is worth the price of admission alone).

Oldaker

is this something that plugs into photoshop?

arodney

Oldaker wrote:

is this something that plugs into photoshop?

Separate, stand alone application. You can download a demo.

Art Scott

I agree with all of ARodney's remarks.......

So Yes.....I would suggest buying it......you can do everything in PSCS4 but LR2 makes Rodney's list so much easier....at least for me it has..............

jfriend

Oldaker wrote:

Hello all,
Just was wondering what everyone uses lightroom for?
I currently use Photoshop cs4, would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

CS was designed for the graphic artist and has, over time, had features grafted on for photographers. CS is largely centered around a person who spends a significant time on a small number of graphics files and does sophisticated things to them. While, ACR has added some ability to process a whole shoot of photos, it's still a kluge. Just trying to print multiple 4x6 images on the same sheet of paper is a real kluge in CS and Adobe Bridge is very rudimentary when it comes to keeping track of images. It basically only handles one directory at a time.

Adobe Lightroom, on the other hand, was designed from the ground up to handle the entire workflow of a digital photographer from getting the images off the card, to sorting through all the images from a shoot, to doing bulk editing things on multiple images at a time (like setting white balance) to filing them away in a way you can easily find them later, to printing to generating web galleries, to creating web sizes, etc...

Lightroom is not a top of the line pixel editor (you can't draw on an image with a brush, for example), but it has a rich set of stuff for manipulating photographic images in the way most photographers want to. On the other hand, it has a bunch of things that CSx does not like rich photographic printing, a full database engine behind it for filing and searching and organizing.

In the ideal world, you do 95%+ of your work in Lightroom (because it's so much more productive to do your work in LR) and take a few images into CSx for some detail work that you can't do in LR. LR is fully integrated with CSx so you can do that and still maintain all the organization in LR (it turns the LR images into a TIFF, puts it into CSx, you edit it in CSx, you save it in CSx and the saved image is back in LR for you.

FYI, all editing in LR is non-destructive meaning your original image is not touched and your edits are saved as a list of changes you made that you can back up to any state at any time. It's very, very nice. It's kind of like everything being in a layer in CSx, but even easier to use.

W.W. Webster

In addition to the Lightroom functions that are not in Photoshop (image management, etc), you'd be likely to find very reduced use for Photoshop for image manipulation if you exploit the related functions in Lightroom. However you are not obliged to do so.

I only use Photoshop (Elements, in my case) for image transformation, to deal with perspective issues such as converging verticals. Otherwise Lightroom does all I need and does it in an efficient workflow. I'm hopeful that, with v3.0, I will be able to bin Photoshop for good.

Lightroom is designed for, and focused on, the needs of photographers. Photoshop is designed for the wider needs of the graphics industry more generally, and accordingly is unduly complex for, and includes capabilities that are irrelevant to, the needs of most photographers.

Pupator

Especially now that Lightroom has brush operations for localized adjustments it's a no-brainer - get it! I NEVER open Photoshop anymore. Everything I need to do with my pictures (including tagging, organizing, converting, printing, and uploading to Smugmug) is done from LR.

kdog

Pupator wrote:

... uploading to Smugmug) is done from LR.

I thought the LR uploader didn't work in LR2?

W.W. Webster

kdog wrote:

I thought the LR uploader didn't work in LR2?

Not true. :nah

kdog

W.W. Webster wrote:

Not true. :nah

Dang. You guys are really trying to get me to buy LR, aren't ya. :cry

Qarik

Oldaker wrote:

Hello all,
Just was wondering what everyone uses lightroom for?
I currently use Photoshop cs4, would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

Another way to look at it..if you shoot events or gigs then yes you need it. If you shoot pictures here and there ..you probably don't.

W.W. Webster

Oldaker wrote:

... would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

kdog wrote:

I thought the LR uploader didn't work in LR2?

kdog wrote:

Dang. You guys are really trying to get me to buy LR, aren't ya. :cry

No, just answering your questions on the basis of my personal experience!

wilsonjg

Been looking at Lightroom.....

Here is my workflow...tell my why Lightroom will be easier for me and tell me how Lightroom stores things on my hard drive...

I shoot sports primarily...games and tournaments...average 1,200 to 2,000 images per game or as many as 10,000 to 15,000 for events. I shoot JPEG 95% of the time. I currently make a folder and name it "whatever the event is" and store it in a master Photography folder on my hard drive. I pull photos from there via Photoshop CS3 and clean/finish each photo I plan to use and either add them to my site or add them to a disk for the client. I am definate I don't using 1/3rd of what Photoshop has to offer, but can Lightroom do most everything I'll need??

I am VERY intereseted in the filing, tagging and labeling aspects of Lightroom...

thanks

rutt

I guess somebody has to weigh in on the opposite side. I bought the original LR and tried to like it. But:

• I found the organization unnecessarily heavyweight and opaque. It was very slow compared to bridge at showing images from a shoot so I could accept/reject them. It also required more keystrokes to reject and move on to the next image. I keep images in a hierarchical folder structure year/month/day(/shoot). I'm not sure what more LR is supposed to add to this other than tagging by event name or model. But that's a manual procedure which has plenty of easy and more obvious implementations than a full blown database.
• I felt limited by the develop tools compared to what I can do in PS. My usual workflow is just not supported at all. No LAB measurements in the droppers, no RGB curves or layer masks for sophisticated cast removal. Etc, etc.
• Yeah, I'm not in love with PS printing for my Epson Pro r4k. I've used ImagePrint for years and get much better results than from PS. I think a lot of that is the difference between the Epson driver and the IP RIP. Is there any reason to think LR does this better than PS? If so, why not make the capability available in PS? In particular, does LR support pure B&W printing (no process black) with this printer?

Look, plenty of people are loving LR. I'm just an old dog, set in his ways. But I thought I'd weigh in to provide a little of balance.

CynthiaM

Oldaker wrote:

Hello all,
Just was wondering what everyone uses lightroom for?
I currently use Photoshop cs4, would there be any reason for me to need lightroom?

Do you "need" Lightroom? No, not if you have CS4.

Could you benefit from it ? Absolutley! I've been using Lightroom since the beta came out for windows and there has been no turning back. There isn't much that you can do with regard to raw processing that you can't do in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) but it's easier in Lightroom. While you can now take a snapshot in ACR, I don't believe you can make a virtual copy the way you can in Lightroom, which allows you to keep multiple renditions of an image, (maybe one in color, one in B&W, one B&Wand toned, etc). They line up right next to each other for you to see in Lightroom but don't take up any more space on your hard drive. Also, I find the spot removal feature much easier to use in Lighroom because you can control the size of each spot whereas if you make 10 little ones in ACR and then the 11th is much larger, when you resize the brush, the 10 prior spots also get resized to the larger one. And while ACR now allows you to take a snapshot, I don't believe it keeps a history state like Lightroom does. In Lighroom, there is a running history state which remains with the image; you don't lose it when you close Lighroom. So if you like what you did 20 steps and two days ago, you can go back to it.

And this is only regarding the benes of the raw processor. It's also a database which allows you to catalog and more importantly, find your images. While you can keyword in the Bridge, recalling them isn't so easy. you have to do a find and it's slow. But in Lightroom, for example, I have images of birds or flowers that may be across multiple folders all over my hard drive. But you click on the keyword for flowers and in a flash, they are all there. Plus Lightroom keeps a thumbnail and is still able to recall information for images even if they are offline; on an external hard drive that is not plugged in. I have a separate catalog of about 10,000 images that I have slowly been placing on dvds with the intention of storing them in a waterproof, fireproof container; I live in South Florida and hurricane season is upon us. Everything is keyworded and each dvd is in what lighroom calls its own collection and named something like disk 24 and then the actually disk is labelled accordingly. So again, if I have flowers on 10 dvds, if I ask Lighroom to show me anything I have keyworded with flowers it will show me all of them and then I know which disk it is on.

The slideshow is basec, nothing fancy. But you can run the slideshow and while it runs, rate your images without having to sit there with your finger on the arrow key to advance the images. You can set up templates in the printing module so that with one click all of your settings and profile is there and then you don't have to waste time searching for now what paper type are you supposed to use for that paper that you don't use too often and can never remember the paper type? I have no need for the web module, so I can't comment on that.

You can download a demo. Try it; you'll like it!

Oldaker

Thanks for all the replies, i have the demo version now, i just did install it, so time to start watching some training videos to figure it out
any recommendations for learning about it?

arodney

Oldaker wrote:

Thanks for all the replies, i have the demo version now, i just did install it, so time to start watching some training videos to figure it out
any recommendations for learning about it?

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/LR2.shtml

CynthiaM

Oldaker wrote:

Thanks for all the replies, i have the demo version now, i just did install it, so time to start watching some training videos to figure it out
any recommendations for learning about it?

http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html

The Lightroom videos that were linked to by Andrew Rodney on the Luminous Landscape site are excellent, but one of the things I like about Julianne kosts videos is that I picked up a number of little tips/tricks that I had not seen anywhere else.

Andrew Maiman

kdog wrote:

I thought the LR uploader didn't work in LR2?

You can also use a plugin for uploading to Smugmug. I highly recommend this one by Jeffrey Friedl, saves a lot of time.

Photog4Christ

Pupator wrote:

Especially now that Lightroom has brush operations for localized adjustments it's a no-brainer - get it! I NEVER open Photoshop anymore. Everything I need to do with my pictures (including tagging, organizing, converting, printing, and uploading to Smugmug) is done from LR.

Even Scott Kelby has said that he hardly uses PS. I think he said that he does 95% of his work in LR, but I don't remember the exact figure, so don't quote me on that.

NealAddy

I'm also using the eval version of Lightroom at the moment and just last night began watching the Kelby LR training vids by Matt Kloskowski. Excellent. He has four vids (one basic and three advanced vids) that would be well worth the $20 fee for a month's subscription.

My current workflow consists of Nikon Transfer, View, and Capture NX2. I guess it is very basic compared to LR/CS. I don't own CS yet but I've been close to pulling the trigger several times. I thought I would evaluate LR first since it looked more like what I need. So far it looks great but the jury is still out. I plan to finish the Kelby training vids and then decide which way to go.

Photog4Christ

NealAddy wrote:

I'm also using the eval version of Lightroom at the moment and just last night began watching the Kelby LR training vids by Matt Kloskowski. Excellent. He has four vids (one basic and three advanced vids) that would be well worth the $20 fee for a month's subscription.

Just Google Lightroom Tutorials. Also do a search at YouTube. There's TONS of free LR resources available.

InsuredDisaster

I used to use Bridge, but I hated it. Once I tried LR, I had to buy it. Bridge took forever, and I coudln't find anything once I put it in there. LR just had so many more tools available during all stages of a workflow. I'm using CS3, so maybe bridge has gotten better. I haven't opened it in a very long time.

rutt wrote:

I guess somebody has to weigh in on the opposite side. I bought the original LR and tried to like it. But:

• I found the organization unnecessarily heavyweight and opaque. It was very slow compared to bridge at showing images from a shoot so I could accept/reject them. It also required more keystrokes to reject and move on to the next image. I keep images in a hierarchical folder structure year/month/day(/shoot). I'm not sure what more LR is supposed to add to this other than tagging by event name or model. But that's a manual procedure which has plenty of easy and more obvious implementations than a full blown database.

I hit shift + X and bam, the photos are tagged for deleting and the next image is on my screen. Then I can delete them later, before I leave my computer, since deleting a huge number of photos can take time.

LR puts my photos in year month day as well. As for the (/shoot) part, I'm not 100% sure how to do that, but I simply tag photos by subject on the day, (you can do this during the upload process) and then they are easy to find.

What I like about LR is that I can easily find photos, even without tagging them. I know that a certain photo was taken with a wide angle, I can narrow it down to even a month, and look only at the WA shots taken that month. I can find it pretty quickly that way. Of course, if you do take the time to tag them, you can find the photos within seconds.

• I felt limited by the develop tools compared to what I can do in PS. My usual workflow is just not supported at all. No LAB measurements in the droppers, no RGB curves or layer masks for sophisticated cast removal. Etc, etc.

If you need all of these tools, then you need them all. I, like many others have found that photoshop is used less and less. I'll only PS the few that IMO are really worth showing, since the majority of what I shoot isn't.

• Yeah, I'm not in love with PS printing for my Epson Pro r4k. I've used ImagePrint for years and get much better results than from PS. I think a lot of that is the difference between the Epson driver and the IP RIP. Is there any reason to think LR does this better than PS? If so, why not make the capability available in PS? In particular, does LR support pure B&W printing (no process black) with this printer?

Look, plenty of people are loving LR. I'm just an old dog, set in his ways. But I thought I'd weigh in to provide a little of balance.

Photog4Christ

InsuredDisaster wrote:

I used to use Bridge, but I hated it. Once I tried LR, I had to buy it. Bridge took forever, and I coudln't find anything once I put it in there. LR just had so many more tools available during all stages of a workflow. I'm using CS3, so maybe bridge has gotten better. I haven't opened it in a very long time.

LR and Bridge ARE NOT the same thing. Bridge was designed to "bridge" together all the CS applications (PS, Illustrator, etc...).

colourbox

InsuredDisaster wrote:

I used to use Bridge, but I hated it. Once I tried LR, I had to buy it. Bridge took forever, and I coudln't find anything once I put it in there. LR just had so many more tools available during all stages of a workflow. I'm using CS3, so maybe bridge has gotten better. I haven't opened it in a very long time.

I'm using CS4 and they have improved Bridge and Camera Raw so much that I could use CS4 to do almost all of the important things I do in Lightroom. They are very comparable now...that is, if you are going by an abstract bullet list of features. On paper, they're roughly equal now. On paper.

The difference is that Lightroom integrates that same feature list, and provide shortcuts for them, in such a way that you'll not want to look at Bridge again. Or you'll just get angry at Bridge because you'll know "it doesn't have to be this hard." So while I know how to run my workflow in Bridge, I do it in Lightroom because it's much less painful there.

InsuredDisaster

Photog4Christ wrote:

LR and Bridge ARE NOT the same thing. Bridge was designed to "bridge" together all the CS applications (PS, Illustrator, etc...).

I wasn't saying they were. I was merely commenting on the previous post where some guy was saying the bridge was working well for him. Perhaps the current one is different, but the previous one didn't work for me.