PS & LR newbie

cab.in.boston

I'm still a newbie to photography in general, but even more so to post-processing. I have been trying to get a feel for PS and LR, to be more specific, I am trying to figure out how to use them and for what - a basic workflow question, I guess.

I am a student until next month, and so due to the incredible discounts I am planning on purchasing CS5 Extended Student/Teacher Edition and LR (I wish LR3 would hurry up and be released, I'd rather not buy LR2 and then have to upgrade). My wife and I have been playing around with the Beta Test version of LR and like it a lot. I know that we are really not "ready" to use PS, but I can't pass it up at this price, since my window of opportunity for student pricing closes in a month or so.

I know that to do major editing, PS is the way to go, but that some things can be done in LR. I'm curious why one would use LR over PS, or what the main basic functions of the two applications are. I have heard about Bridge, and that it's for bringing files from LR to PS and back again, but I'm really uncertain how it all works together.

Does someone have a really bare-bones description about how the programs are used, why you'd need one vs. the other for a particular photo, etc, or are there any good explanatory links on this topic that are already out there? I didn't see anything when I poked around for a bit.

One other quick question, I see that CS5 does HDR, can you also do pano-stitching in PS, or do you need another application for that?

Thanks for any help pointing a newbie down the right path.

ABCL

I'll try my best

Preference is given to LR because it's workflow is a bit more efficient, it's like Aperture's where everything just seems to work, whereas Photoshop's tools are hidden in menus or are obscure pictures on a toolbar and in my experience, Photoshop slows me down. Photoshop does also (CS4/5) have HDR creation, but may I point you into the direction of dedicated HDR software called Photomatix. You have to pay for it but it really does beat Photoshop's implementation.

To give you an idea, here's my workflow:

1) Import to editing rig for use with Lightroom or Move directly to Mac for Aperture 3

2) Correct exposure and organise with Lightroom or Aperture

3) Export from Lightroom or Aperture and import into Photoshop

4) Apply B&W conversion or Noise Reduction and export as .png

For HDR's I use Photomatix and then apply noise reduction.

Richard

Student discounts on Adobe products are substantial, and I think you are right to take advantage of it while you can.

In brief:

LightRoom offers powerful RAW conversion features that are mainly good for making global adjustments to pics (exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, etc). It also provides a database that can manage your catalog easily and a good print management function. It has no ability to combine multiple images.

Photoshop provides nearly identical RAW conversion (it's called ACR in PS), so it can do all of the global adjustments that LR does. In addition, it has an awesome array of tools for making local adjustments, a fairly good panorama stitcher, a rudimentary HDR function (though the CS5 version claims to be much improved) and lets you combine multiple images in very sophisticated ways. It takes time to learn it, but there are many books, DVDs, classes and online sites available as resources. Once you learn your way around, it is not hard to use at all.

Bridge comes included with Photoshop. It is a file browser and can be used as a workflow manager, but it does not offer the database or print capabilities of LightRoom. I use it for culling pics, renaming files, managing metadata (copyright, location, keywords), organizing my processing and uploading to SmugMug.

HTH.

cab.in.boston

Thanks. As I said, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what software is used for what...

ABCL wrote:

... may I point you into the direction of dedicated HDR software called Photomatix. You have to pay for it but it really does beat Photoshop's implementation.

I have downloaded the trial Photomatix, but haven't really played with it very much. I hope to have a little more time once I finish grad school next month. I had read that CS5's HDR implementation was supposedly a big improvement over CS4.

ABCL wrote:

To give you an idea, here's my workflow:

1) Import to editing rig for use with Lightroom or Move directly to Mac for Aperture 3

2) Correct exposure and organise with Lightroom or Aperture

3) Export from Lightroom or Aperture and import into Photoshop

4) Apply B&W conversion or Noise Reduction and export as .png

For HDR's I use Photomatix and then apply noise reduction.

So can you not import/organize with PS? Or is LR just set up better for that application than PS is? Similarly, can PS do exposure correction, or do you really need LR for this? (I have a PC, not a Mac, btw.)

These are probably all very simple concepts that I'll understand a lot better once I have the applications and play around with them more. And I know there are many books about workflow and how to use the products... I'm just trying to get a grasp in my head of how to deal with post-processing. It seems like it's a very cumbersome process.

Thanks for your reply!

ABCL

cab.in.boston wrote:

So can you not import/organize with PS? Or is LR just set up better for that application than PS is? Similarly, can PS do exposure correction, or do you really need LR for this? (I have a PC, not a Mac, btw.)

These are probably all very simple concepts that I'll understand a lot better once I have the applications and play around with them more. And I know there are many books about workflow and how to use the products... I'm just trying to get a grasp in my head of how to deal with post-processing. It seems like it's a very cumbersome process.

Thanks for your reply!

You can import/organize with PS too, but I found LR's and Aperture's file browser and tagger to just be quicker and easier to do. PS can do exposure correction and even has the over and under exposed metres (red / blue) to show you on screen, but unless you've organised an entire toolbar with all the essentials in PS, it takes all but 15 seconds to drag a scroll bar in LR or Aperture, job done

I see it as this:

PS - Good for single photo editing and introducing artistic effects into the image.
LR/Aperture - Good for multiple quick photo editing and organising. The GUI seems to be designed with workflow in mind.

cab.in.boston

Thanks, Richard. I think this helps, although from the description it makes it seem like if you have PS, you can do everything that LR does, so why do you need both? But when I start to think that way, I realize that seemingly everyone who uses PS also uses LR, so there must be a good reason for that.

Anyway, as I said to ABCL, I imagine this will clear itself up when I get the s/w and start to use it. I have my "proof of educational status" with me, so I'll be placing my order today.

Richard

cab.in.boston wrote:

Thanks, Richard. I think this helps, although from the description it makes it seem like if you have PS, you can do everything that LR does, so why do you need both?

Not everything, but people's needs differ. LR is a lot cheaper than PS and for some people it does everything that they are likely to do. PS/Bridge lacks a catalog database, which is important over the long haul if you want to find an old pic among the tens or hundreds of thousands that you have accumulated. OTOH, if you are only doing family snapshots, you might not need a database. I can't imagine doing without layers, masks, blending modes, selection tools, channels, paths, and a bunch of other stuff that is in PS but not LR. Other people do just fine without them.

I don't use LR myself, but that's only because I developed my own catalog database system years ago and it still meets my needs. If it weren't for that, I would probably be using both. Think carefully about how you are going to keep track of your pics in the future. Despite the overlap, LR might be worth it only for the catalog.