Malcolm -
1- If you are not invested in one piece of software or another, or one
workflow vs another, then the question is simply "Which is better for me
- LR or PS?" If you are invested in a particular workflow then the
question becomes "Do the advantages of LR over PS (or vice versa)
justify the effort it would take to switch software?" Those are two
distinctly different questions.
I've been using PS seriously since 2001 and have developed a workflow
and various enhancement processes that work for me and rely on features
found in PS. In particular, I learned Photoshop from someone who taught
it as a layer based photographic manipulation tool. I can't think of the
last time that I made a serious photo and did not have some editing
involving layers. For me, changing over to Lightroom would require that
I relearn many processes that I can do in seconds in PS using layers.
That is not to say that those processes cannot be done in LR - I am
pretty sure most or all can be, but LIghtroom offers no advantages to me
that would offset the investment I would have to make to learn how to
use it.
But - if I was not invested in PS, then LR would probably be the way to
go. I would simply learn to do things in the LR environment vs PS and
reap some of the benefits that LR offers specifically for photographers.
2 - From my trial of Lightroom some time ago it seemed to offer some
workflow advantages to photographers who shoot products, portraits,
weddings, etc. It nicely integrates features for making portfolios,
uploading them to the web, etc. If I did that kind of work then using
LR, or adding LR to PS would probably make sense. I am sure that there
are other photography specific workflow enhancements that LR has that PS
does not that are beneficial to commercial photographers. Those are not
too important to me since I only shoot for my own amusement, but could
be a significant reason to select LR over PS.
3. LR has established itself as a core tool for photographers and will
probably continue to dominate Photographic processing. For someone
starting out, learning LR would probably help you plug into a greater
knowledge base now and in the future.
On a related note, both LR and PS are core photographic / graphic
tools. Most third party tools, as capable as they may be, simply do not
have the support community behind them that you will find with Adobe
products. I used Corel Photopaint in the 1990's before switching to PS.
It was a great tool but I have never regretted switching to PS - there
is just so much more nfo about how to do things in PS that alone made
the switch worthwhile. Again - if you are working just for yourself
there are many options out there that could be fine.
Personally, I use PS and Thumbsplus v7 (a very simple thumbnail and
cataloging system) to manage my collection of images. In addition to
PS, I use Photomatix, Zerene Stacker and several other tools on a
regular basis. One of the advantages of PS is that it allows me to take
output files from different tools and unify them through blending of
layers. When LR supports layers I might consider adding it as a tool and
ultimately migrating to it, but for now the only advantages I see in LR
are in how it better supports a professional workflow (irrelevant to my
amateur workflow) and not in how it supports image adjustment.
Mark
On 12/7/2014 3:03 PM, Malcolm Smith wrote:
Bob W wrote:
I think you'd do well to buy one or two of the books about LR and spend
a weekend working your way through them. There are really 3 major
topics to consider and they feedback into each other to some extent:
1. What is your storage (and back-up) strategy. In my experience it's
best to use LR to manage everything rather than mixing LR and your OS's
capabilities
2. Understand LR's workflow and adapt it within reason to suit
yourself, but try not to fight against it
3. How to use the various tools to achieve your ends. Think of it in
terms of ends rather than means and you won't be so frustrated when you
can't find things you might expect, like layers perhaps, which are a
means to an end rather than an end in themself, and you won't waste
your time trying to learn stuff you'll never use.
I think that is a cracking piece of advice, which I will do. Thanks Bob.
Malcolm
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