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Adobe Elements 6 or Lightroom

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C Paul

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Would like to upgrade from my elements 3 to either version 6 or lightroom--any recommendations---I am new to digital, and thought it would be wise to continue on the learning path with more up to date software --thanks
 
Paul if you are a college student you can get these programs pretty cheap at your college bookstore. I think Elements 6 still does not allow you to do duotone and quadtone manipulations. So no dragonizing pictures.

--
John
Iowa, USA

 
I have both and my preference is to work in Lightroom. It is not a difficult program to manage and is intuitive after only a week or two of "playing" with it. Lightroom's organizational abilities are superior to Elements 6.
 
Thanks for your recommendations--I will purchase the elements 6. In an earlier post I got help in using raw and work flow--I really appreciate the willingness of the pentax team in helping beginners--I have not used a camera since my me super days ( when I was a student) --bought a mzs and then a ist ds--both were hardly used until a few weeks ago--have a number of pentax ( non digital ) lenses--I am having a ball--thanks again
 
You can download a trial of Elements from Adobe. It's a 30 day look-see and well worth it. It was going to pony-up to buy a copy online, but if you are a Costco member, they're running a coupon special in the next week or two for $49 for Elements 6.0...

Tony
 
I have both Lightroom 1.3 and Photoshop CS3 on my computer.

Since I installed Lightroom, I hardly use Photoshop anymore. Only for advanced picture editing.

Lightroom can organize your pictures, make backups, has a very good workflow for large quantities and some very slick color and lighting editing features.

I'd go for Lightroom.

Also have a look at: http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Adobe-Photoshop-Elements-6
--
  • Bert
 
All---Thanks for the inputs and help--I downloaded trial of elements 6 --will continue to work with it for a few days and will do the same for Lightroom---the elements 6 is ,as was advised, on sale from Costco for $ 49 ( in their new passport book) in mid January
 
Is there a way to get raw into Adobe Elements 6 or Lightroom?

Maybe the correct question to ask - will they work with ACR, or any other plug-in for raw conversion?
Thanks!
 
vovkaza said:
Is there a way to get raw into Adobe Elements 6 or Lightroom?
Maybe the correct question to ask - will they work with ACR, or any
other plug-in for raw conversion?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Sure. Both packages, especially LightRoom, are designed around importing and editing RAW. Both come with an ACR engine. LR has it built-in behind their own interface while PSE uses ACR as plug-in with slightly limited capabilities compared to ACR in the full PS CS3.

--
http://www.pbase.com/klopus
 
C Paul said:
Would like to upgrade from my elements 3 to either version 6 or
lightroom--any recommendations---I am new to digital, and thought it
would be wise to continue on the learning path with more up to date
software --thanks
Click to expand...
Normally, at least for advanced users, it's not OR proposition, more like AND.

LR is first and foremost is a workflow and DAM (Digital Asset Management) aimed at organizing, cataloging, tagging and batch processing massive amounts of images. It has decent and simple to use image editing capabilities but that's not LR's main purpose. On the other hand PSE is an advanced image editor at heart. DAM functionality also there but it's secondary.

When you compare both as image editors LR is a much simpler and easier to learn and use but PSE is a much more powerful tool. Here're the most important advanced editing features that PSE has and LR not:
  • Selective editing and masking - For example, you sharpen foreground but not sky.
  • Layers - Very powerful concept for superimposing images, selective corrections, blending, etc
  • Filters - Zillions of plug-ins by Adobe, 3rd party, free. Way to greatly expand or change stock functionality having better sharpeners, noise reduction, film simulations, frames, ect.
  • Actions (scripted commands) - Way to automated many tasks.
  • Retouching - Wealth of tools to correct small blemishes, remove or plant details, etc.
  • Drawing - Less important for photographer but if you want draw elements or embed text in the photo PSE is your ticket.
If you think that all above you won't need to edit images and you aren't planning to process copious professional amounts of images instead of LR I would suggest to look at cheaper and simpler (but still powerful) ACDSee Pro. It's a very good DAM and has a simple but feature rich editor including RAW support.

--
http://www.pbase.com/klopus
 
Sounds like you're using film as well as digital. In that case Elements is almost mandatory, especially for the retouching functions. Don't forget you can also get LR at a student price of $99, and Elements will plug into it.
 
colesf said:
Sounds like you're using film as well as digital. In that case
Elements is almost mandatory, especially for the retouching
functions. Don't forget you can also get LR at a student price of
$99, and Elements will plug into it.
Click to expand...
What it has to do with film? You need retouching or selective editing with digital to the same extent if not more as with film. Btw, I'm actually digital only and mostly use full CS3 or Lightzone but my wife uses PSE. I also have LR but don't see a need in it.

--
http://www.pbase.com/klopus
 
Randy Girouard said:
I would suggest starting out with Elements 6 it's a great piece of
software that gives a little bit of everything from CS and Lightroom.
Don't get me wrong, Lightroom is great but, for a beginner stick with
Elements.
P.S. just saw it in Walmart for $79.99

http://www.girouardphotography.com
Click to expand...
Could not agree less ;-)

Seriously. There is not much differense between Element 3 and 6. I have both.

I'm also a Lightroom user. I'd say that Lightroom is a lot easyer for a beginner. The userinerface is a lot better, with nothing hidden in menues. So I'd go that route. BTW an hour of two spent here http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/Photoshop_LR/01/index.html will speed learning a lot.

But i would not scrap EL 3 either. It is a good backend with Lightroom. Doing the basic editing in LR and doing the stuff requering Layers in EL.

If you find that Elements 3 does not have all the features you need, then go for EL 6 or CS 3 at a later stage in your learning process.

YMMV
--
Fototim
 
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