To buy or not to buy?

[tank121]

I currently own View NX and Photoshop Elements 11 and all the pictures I take on my Nikon D5100 are in raw format. Currently I'm doing a 1yr part time photography course at college and we use Photoshop. My quandary is this can I do everything in Elements 11 that you can do in Lightroom 5 with the exception of auto lens correction? I know elements has it's separate raw processing section was is supposed to be similar to Lightroom. I can currently obtain Lightroom for around £58 in the UK in a student licence, alternatively if I buy Lightroom will I be able to see Elements? I've heard Lightroom can't do layers. ? Currently I have 10 days of my Lr5 trial to go and found 24 excellent tutorials by Anthony Morganti on YouTube.

Do any fellow Nikon users get by without any of the big 3 programs and use View NX exclusively? I know it's supposed to represent Nikons colours better and reads the in camera picture controls etc?

 

[KmH]

Elements, Lightroom's Develop modulre, and Photoshop CS 6/CC all use the same application for Raw file editing - Adobe Camera Raw.

The Camera Raw version in Elements is a consumer grade, de-featured version of Photoshop CC/CS 6 Camera Raw, and Lightroom's Develop module.

Lightroom's main function is managing a large catalog of images that are expected to make the photographer money.

Nikon's $180 Capture NX 2 is closer to being equivalent to Elements, Lightroom, and CS 6/CC, which is why View NX2 is free.