lightroom in lieu of photoshop...maybe?

rosselliot · March 17, 2007

what do you think of just getting lightroom? I'm not exactly a professional photography...yet. but I'd like to be able to start professionally photshopping my photos to look their best and also start shooting in RAW! You can do many of the neat things that you do in Photoshop in lightroom, right? such as the channel mixer when you convert something to black and white and the curves, correct?

well, either. I need to know what your opinion is on this matter, because I can't decide whether I shoot in RAW while in France or not. if I shoot in RAW, I'm going to have to buy lightroom, because iphoto and gimp (all I have right now) don't support it. but I don't have the money to buy the full photoshop CS3 right now, so I'm wondering what y'all think about JUST getting the lightroom and if I can successfully edit most of my pictures from there. have y'all had good luck with it?

- RE

P.S. - I downloaded the free preview, and it seemed really complicated...is there a really simple way just to save it as a JPEG? I couldn't find an easy way to do so....it seemed so complicated.

colourbox · March 17, 2007

If you are short on funds you should get Lightroom and use the GIMP in place of Photoshop. That should be a good balance.

When you are done editing, you select the images and "Export" to JPEG. There is no "channel mixer" because the Grayscale conversion in Lightroom is much easier to control, like the new BW converter in PS CS3 beta.

Lightroom is simpler than Photoshop. In many ways is is SO much faster. It's just not set up the way we've been conditioned by older software. Watch these videos to get you going:
NAPP videos
Michael Tapes videos
Killer Tips videos

LiquidAir · March 18, 2007

If you are currently shooting JPEG and largely leaving those unprocessed, shifting to RAW and sweetening them in Lightroom will result in a dramatic improvement in the quality of your images once you get the hang of the develop module. These days about 90% of my shots are processed only in Lightroom.

rosselliot · March 18, 2007

LiquidAir wrote:

If you are currently shooting JPEG and largely leaving those unprocessed, shifting to RAW and sweetening them in Lightroom will result in a dramatic improvement in the quality of your images once you get the hang of the develop module. These days about 90% of my shots are processed only in Lightroom.

okay, I'm so glad I started seriously looking into RAW, because from what I can tell, it sounds like it will definitely improve my photos! I think I'm really looking forward to taking all of my photos in RAW while I'm in France! I'm just gonna have to jump over the 10MB/picture hurdle!!!!

So, LiquidAir, you use almost solely lightroom to edit your RAW files? can you get really cool features and looks with lightroom as you may be able to do in PP? do you find it takes a really long time to edit RAW then have to export them as JPGS then upload them somewhere, etc. etc?

thanks for y'all's input!

- RE

silica · March 18, 2007

For me, Lightroom is missing one feature that would prohibit getting rid of Photoshop. And that is layers.

Poseidon · March 18, 2007

Great Links Colourbox!

cmason · March 18, 2007

I have PS CS2, Lightroom, and Paintshop Pro X. So perhaps to save you a similar expense, here is my advice:

1) Lightroom will cover 95% of what you need to to with your photos, RAW or JPG. This includes DAM, corrections, adjustments and export to JPG. It offers printing and web stuff too, if that is of interest. You may wish to check out Bibble lite, with is very very good here as well, though weak on the DAM.

2) Missing from Lightroom is the incredible control that a sophisticated edit program offers, in terms of some more creative work. Needed? No...useful?...yes. Is it so useful enough to require spending $600+? Tough one. In your case, you can purchase the student license, so that's a better deal.

However, for $100, PaintShop Pro offers nearly everything that PS CS2 does. The only thing I have found lacking is LAB mode. And this is really only important if you are a PS genius, or reading one of Dan Margulis books. The only other downside to PSP, is that it isn't PS CS2 (see below). There will be Photoshop junkies that tell you otherwise, but they are talking about the tiny differences in products, and the 'methods' they are used to...believe me, I have both: PSP is exceptionally powerful.

3) Photoshop CS2: Yes it is expensive, and no it isn't worth it. (don't flame me...$600..give me a freakin break.) It is no better than many other tools (PSP, GIMP, Paint.net) that I have tried. But what it does have is something that no other product has: It is the defacto standard.

The learning of photo editing happens by doing, and the doing really comes together based on some tutorial, tip or class you take. Nearly 99.5% of these are based on PS CS2. Translating to PSP is impossible..trust me, I learned this.

So my advice, if you must spend $$: Buy Lightroom. Stop.

If you find you are getting limited, download trials to PSP and try it for 30 days. I think you will like it. In your case, as a student,perhaps the student PS CS2 makes this much easier to just go PS CS2, which eventually you will likely have to do if you decide to go 'pro'.

For everyone else, who does not qualify for the student PS CS2, if you are on Windows, check out paint.net (google), a free, layer-based program that is quite good. Might as well try GIMP too, though I suggest GIMPShop version.

lightroom in lieu of photoshop...maybe?

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