I have a question about LR3 and Photo Shop CS#.

[reedshots]

I see most people on here ether shoot in RAW and / or recommend it to all,
but do not put much stock in LR3 except for its file management ability (or
other software) and swear by PS CS# (5).
Not talking about HDR or multiple image merging, just plain old developing
(processing) of an image. (Though these are nice to have in one software
package CS5)
Now let me try to explain my question.
I shoot in RAW and process almost exclusively using LR3. I do have elements
9 and Photomatrix for any creative work, frames or cutesy things, HDR but I
don't use them for RAW processing or any real developing.
I find that LR3 has everything I need to crop, adjust white balance, color,
clarity, even the graduated filter and spot removal and all for bringing out
the best of the image. Now I know that the elements version of RAW and
general processing is limited compared to CS5 which has almost if not
everything (RAW processing) that LR does (all the basic RAW adjustments).
Now for my confusion when shooting an image taking in account for
composition, camera settings, lighting, distracting elements in the seen and
most everything within the control of the shooter to create the best
possible image, why are there so many people always talking about (cloning,
masks, layers and all the other things CS5 can't do to the RAW image until
it has been converted to Tiff or JPEG?) Once the image has been converted
you have lost a lot of processing advantage - haven't you? And do all the
other tools CS5 has really make that much of a deference?

 

[Big Mike]

why are there so many people always talking about (cloning,
masks, layers and all the other things CS5 can't do to the RAW image until
it has been converted to Tiff or JPEG?) Once the image has been converted
you have lost a lot of processing advantage - haven't you?

On one hand, sure, once you have converted the RAW file into an image file (JPEG/TIFF/PSD), you no longer have the ability/advantage to make those RAW adjustments. But you haven't lost them...you've just moved on from them.

So you make your RAW adjustments, whether it's in Lightroom, Adobe Camera RAW or your camera's included software (Canon Digital Pro, for example). By making those adjustments, you are taking advantage of what RAW has to offer. You then convert the RAW file into an image, and you can then do further editing with an image editor (Photoshop, Elements etc.).

and do all the other tools CS5 has really make that much of a deference?

For some things, for some people...yes. For many others, no.

If you don't need Photoshop or a powerful image editing program, then that's fine. Lightroom is made to do just about everything that the 'average' photographer might need to do.
But there are still plenty of things that LR can't do. Just about anything involving layers....and most photographers who really know their Photoshop, do just about everything with layers.

The one thing that still gets me scratching my head...is that so many people edit in LR, then export, then edit in Photoshop...and that's it. They are missing the whole 'back end' of what Lightroom can do. Not to mention, now their 'finished images' are not 'in' LR at all...they are just finished files in a folder.
The 'intended' way is to go directly from LR to PS (or whatever) via the 'Edit in...' command. This takes your image out of LR, but brings it back in right after. It comes back in as a TIFF, not a RAW anymore, so you still want to make your RAW adjustments before this...but the point is that it lets you keep your final images in LR, where you can use the awesome features it has.

 

[KenC]

I use PS for all my post-RAW processing. If you get your RAW conversion pretty close to where you want to be in terms of contrast, color, brightness, etc., then there really is no problem editing the tiff file in PS, even an 8-bit tiff file. The problem occurs with making rather drastic changes to an 8-bit tiff (or jpg) file in any program.

As for layers, I would not like to be without them. Mostly, I do selective brightness, contrast and color adjustments by using layer masks. I don't know if it is possible to do this in other software. Someone I know claimed he could do it in Elements, but the process he described for being able to do this reversibly seemed like a real nuisance. I find that there are almost always areas of an image that I want to make darker or lighter, and occasionally I want certain areas to be different in contrast or color (saturation usually).

 

[bennielou]

I use LR3 for 3 basic things: Culling Images,White Balance, and Exposure Correction. I know that LR can do tons of other stuff, and I have lots of presets, but it's rare that I use any of them.

All my photos are exported from LR, and then reopened (normally 50 at a time) into PSCS5. The reason being I have much more control over individual aspects of the photos. I use a lot of Layer Masking because I want to keep some of the image the same (mainly the lighting), but tweak colors, curves, and hues of other portions of the image. I also have the ability to patch out distracting items, shore up lines, liquify, edge sharpen, and many other things that simply can't be done in LR.

LR is fine for getting the image converted with proper components, but it's not so great for finishing an images, IMO.

However, I know several good photogs who are happy with LR and presets, and only work on a few images in PS.

YMMV

 

[KmH]

Both Photoshop CS5's Camera Raw and Lightroom 3's Develope module use the same edit rendering engine - ACR 6.

why are there so many people always talking about (cloning,
masks, layers and all the other things CS5 can't do to the RAW image until
it has been converted to Tiff or JPEG?) Once the image has been converted
you have lost a lot of processing advantage - haven't you? And do all the
other tools CS5 has really make that much of a deference [sic]?

It depends on what the image needs.

Lets clear up a couple of points here: TIFF and JPEG are far from the only choices. Many edit in Photoshop using the .PSD file type. TIFF can have a 16-bit color depth, or an 8-bit color depth and is not a lossy (in 16-bit mode), compressed file type like JPEG is. JPEG only has an 8-bit color depth, however many of the tools in CS5 can be used in a 16-bit depth mode.

Photoshop CS5 has a range of selection tools, selection features and, fselection unctions Lightroom just does not have. The selection tools in CS5 allowing more precise selections.

Lightroom has rudimentry (compared to CS5) masking.

Lightroom uses the ProPhoto RGB color space for editing in the Develope module, and that color space is not user changeable. sRGB cannot display the full range of colors available with the ProPhoto RGB color space Lightroom uses.

 

[D-B-J]

The one thing that still gets me scratching my head...is that so many people edit in LR, then export, then edit in Photoshop...and that's it. They are missing the whole 'back end' of what Lightroom can do. Not to mention, now their 'finished images' are not 'in' LR at all...they are just finished files in a folder.
The 'intended' way is to go directly from LR to PS (or whatever) via the 'Edit in...' command. This takes your image out of LR, but brings it back in right after. It comes back in as a TIFF, not a RAW anymore, so you still want to make your RAW adjustments before this...but the point is that it lets you keep your final images in LR, where you can use the awesome features it has.

I use the "Edit-in" feature all the time, and it works great. I can take that LR processed image, seamlessly open it in PS and do what i need, then pop it back into LR. It's a great feature, and i am glad adobe had the creativity and sense to add that feature.

 

[OscarMike]

I'm not a fan of Photoshop. albeit, the last PS i owned was CS2 (started with PS7) i found the learning curve to be unrelenting. The level of "perfection" the shooter wants to obtain could drive you to one camp or the other. I guess you could consider me to be something of a purist in that i think the more work you put into better camera work the less you have to change in PS. Obviously i don't get into the artistic aspect of photo manipulation, which is art by itself and could be done without picking up a camera at all. I shoot a lot of pictures for a lot of different things, but at the end of the day its all for personal use or close friends. So for my dollar getting PS is like getting a 53' tractor trailer to go grocery shopping. I've had to spend quite a bit of time with LR to get it to do a lot of the photo correction i want, and its not as specific as i would like sometimes. When i happen upon these moments it reminds me to just take better pictures in the first place. spend more time getting the lighting right, use a different filter, etc., and its less to fix on the back end.