Adobe Lightroom

[scoundrelnyc {★}]

Any advice on Adobe Lightroom? Is it worth the purchase. Right now I have Adobe Photoshop CS5 and was wondering if I should also get Lightroom. 

 

Thanks!

Marcus

[richardwangphotography]

Lightroom is a photo management program.  Photoshop is a photo editing program.

 

You don't really need LR, if your workflow is good.  It's nice to have but not necessary.  The only time LR is needed is if you have a lot of images to manage, for example if you shoot sports or weddings.

[Edson Carlos]

What Richard said! 

 

However the bridge has been slightly built that brings some photo editing capabilities into LR, MILD editing. If you have CS5 you have the full spread of tools at your fingertips and don't need LR unless you have tons and tons of image data to manage and sort.

 

What are you managing your images with currently? 

 

[Rich Newnham Photography]

LR3 is much more than just management.I do 95% of my editing in LR - it has all the standard stuff like exposure settings, colour balancing, spot removal/clone/heal, masks and effects like vignetting and grain.

 

Content-aware fill is about the only thing you really need CS5 for unless you're doing digital art work (which my skills are absolutely not good enough for!), but for standard photography you don't need to spend out on CS5. Unless you're not spending your own money on it ;)

 

<edit> And any advanced editing you might need, CS5 is useful for. Mostly it depends on what you need to do, in my experience a lot of photographers aren't aware of how powerful LR3 is though.

[DanO]

Absolutely! I didn't thinks so as I have CS4 and Bridge but lightroom makes PP so fast that I hardly use CS4 unless I need to do something other than correct color, exposure, etc. The previous responses are correct too, if you just do a few shots at a time it is not that big of a deal, but if you shoot several hundred it is worth it.

Let's say you missed your color balance when shot so you need to do each picture. If the are all shot under the same lighting conditions then all you have to do is correct one then apply the settings to the rest in one batch!

 

Just my opinion....

 

Dan

[East Coast Pinups]

I use LR as my first line of workflow. A quick for instance....

 

Let's say I shoot 100 frames of a model today. I do my initial import using LR, where I can create a directory name in the library (and sub-directories too) Once imported, I can view the library, and delete images that just won't make the cut. After I delete those, I can then flag the images I wish to use, either by a simple flag, or by a rating (stars in this case) When I'm done making those selections, I can then have LR load up only the flagged or rated images, and remove the non-rated/flagged images from my workspace. So I may flag/rate 15 of those original 100. From there, I can start the editing process. Now, I don't use LR for my final editing, but I do use it as a digital darkroom in order to batch process. I will choose one of my images, work out any exposure or clarity, color, WB settings, etc... and create a user defined setting with a name. I can then apply that setting to all of the photos or cherry pick the ones I really wish to apply that setting to. After that, I can bulk export from the raw file, to a full rez .jpg into another sub-directory under the main. So now I have the main directory, the raw directory, and the exported directory with my selected images that have the initial tweaks. From there, I open them individually and do the final edit in CS5, and save those edited images in yet another sub-directory under that main. It keeps everything tidy, and easy to browse, and I know exactly what images and what level of the editing process they are at. Great for workflow, basic batch editing, and tracking...but definitely not a high level editor.

[Amanda Jill Hill]

LR is definately worth purchasing. I started out in CS3, then started using LR for all my workflow.

 

You can flag photos to keep, sort by capture time, and export by capture time. This is especially good for events/weddings where you have more than 1 shooter.

 

The presets are great, and LR is the only software that allows me to apply settings to a whole set of photos at once. Forget batch in Photoshop!

[scoundrelnyc {★}]

Wow! Thanks for all the reply's. You guys rock.