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04-18-2013, 12:08 PM   #1
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Adobe products?

Okay. The title kind of says it all. I am somewhat new to the world of post porcess editing, RAW shooting, etc, etc. I currently have in my possession:
Adobe Photoshop CS6
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
Adobe Camera Raw 7.0
HDR EFEX PRO 2


Now, I keep hearing almost everyone on this fourm talking about Adobe Lightroom... What the hell is it?! I'm curious to know what lightroom is used for exactly, do I need it, and what can I do with it that I cannot do in photoshop. Mind you I am not very skilled with any photoshop or PP in general.
Thanks

04-18-2013, 12:20 PM   #2
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Light room is mostly for photo workflow and organization. It supports most everyday editing tasks and has a more intuitive interface, but it's not quite as powerful as photoshop. For example, light room doesn't support layers.

Those who have both can enjoy the speed of light room for everyday shots and the power of photoshop for pictures that need a lot of editing.

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04-18-2013, 12:47 PM   #3
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I use both Lightroom & CS6, both serve different functions, Lightroom can now do much of the quicker editing functions, but its real power lies in it's file management capabilities.
04-18-2013, 02:54 PM   #4
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Oh, another thing I am a bit curious about (though a tad irrelevant) is noise reduction.. I recently had to do some shooting indoors with no flash unit, so I used a higher ISO between 800 and 3400. What would be the best programme to reduce the appearence of noise. I tried doing it in CS6 using Camera RAW but I noticed in the little window zoomed to 60 percent or so, it looked perfect, but then when I clicked 'done' and it loaded into photoshop, it looked worse than before I did anything to it. What am I doing wrong? ha-ha

04-18-2013, 03:15 PM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by Bcrary3 Quote
I clicked 'done' and it loaded into photoshop
There's five sliders in ACR for noise reduction, I guess it just depends on how you play with them.

As I said before, Lightroom and CS6 have improved such much these days with things like NR, I don't even feel the need to use any NR plugins now.
04-18-2013, 07:29 PM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by Bcrary3 Quote
Oh, another thing I am a bit curious about (though a tad irrelevant) is noise reduction.. I recently had to do some shooting indoors with no flash unit, so I used a higher ISO between 800 and 3400. What would be the best programme to reduce the appearence of noise. I tried doing it in CS6 using Camera RAW but I noticed in the little window zoomed to 60 percent or so, it looked perfect, but then when I clicked 'done' and it loaded into photoshop, it looked worse than before I did anything to it. What am I doing wrong? ha-ha
CS5 tells you to zoom to 100% before using the stuff in the noise reduction section, but in kind of fine print, bottom right. Some people say 50% or some other even division is OK.

The design of Camera RAW is supposed to be that you start with the left Basic tab and work your way top to bottom, then move on to other tabs. That's OK but when I have a shot that needs NR, I go to that tab last. I also set my sharpening on that tab to zero; the default was 25. I usually don't want "input" sharpening. In the tab itself, my camera makes more color noise than luminance, and color noise bothers me more, so I adjust that first. Then luminance, then sometimes some masking and sharpening, then to Photoshop.

I have settled on some numbers I like for each ISO, so now I start there and make small adjustments.
04-18-2013, 08:00 PM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by Bcrary3 Quote
Okay. The title kind of says it all. I am somewhat new to the world of post porcess editing, RAW shooting, etc, etc. I currently have in my possession:
Adobe Photoshop CS6
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10
Adobe Camera Raw 7.0
HDR EFEX PRO 2


Now, I keep hearing almost everyone on this fourm talking about Adobe Lightroom... What the hell is it?! I'm curious to know what lightroom is used for exactly, do I need it, and what can I do with it that I cannot do in photoshop. Mind you I am not very skilled with any photoshop or PP in general.
Thanks
Photoshop should do everything you need for editing, it is just a matter of finding out how.
With Photoshop you get Bridge, which allows you to browse your image files and see relevant EXIF data. I like it but there really isn't any organizing. You can put stuff in folders but then it's harder to search the EXIF data.
Elements theoretically has both an editor and an organizer. The editor works and is a subset of Photoshop, with some features disabled so you want Photoshop. It's not bad. The organizer appears to work except it is geared towards putting captions on photos and naming people. It does not like large sets of images, say 10,000 or more. I like to use Elements on a laptop for travel, so it is rarely stressed.
Lightroom is intended to organize first, with light editing stuff thrown in. When you only have a few thousand shots or a great memory, the organizing feels like fluff you don't need. But with it, you can organize anything. You can organize everything by certain equipment, places, times, content, whatever.

A wedding pro might use Bridge by putting all the shots from one wedding in one folder, maybe subfolders for reception or ceremony or whatever. Then edit one image at a time. If he had Lightroom, he could do something that looks similar. But when he has several weddings, he could also have sets of photos to show prospective clients, using the best shots from any wedding. He can quickly apply one or a group of Camera RAW settings to large sets of images. The files can be exported to other places. He can look at every shot from one of his lenses over years. It is limited more by your organizing imagination than the program.

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