[BullsOnParade81]

I currently have photoshop elements 14 and am wondering if I would be better off getting Lightroom 6. Any advice?

[severalsnakes]

I currently have photoshop elements 14 and am wondering if I would be better off getting Lightroom 6. Any advice?

I thought Elements was great... Until I tried the free 30 day trial of CC Lightroom. There was no going back, especially for editing RAW. The controls are more extensive and intuitive, and with the photography package of CC, you can get CC Photoshop, too. Bing bang boom.

[jatrax]

Apples - Oranges in many ways.

Elements is an editing program with some simple organization tools. Lightroom is an image organizer that also happens to be a very good editor.

The workflow is very, very different. Personally I could not operate without Lightroom, I use it for all image editing and organization. I also use photoshop but possibly on 5% of total images, maybe less.

You might want to get a Lightroom book, or watch some basic Lightroom videos before deciding. You might also ask yourself why you want to change programs and what you are looking to do that Elements does not do. If you are looking to organize your image collection then IMHO just get Lightroom and work through the pain of learning it, there isn't anything better. But if all you need is a simple editor then Lightroom might have a lot of features you would never use.

You also need to consider your over all workflow. Are you shooting and working with RAW files? Then in Lightroom you would work only on the RAW files and only produce a jpeg or TIFF if you want to export to a website or external printer. Otherwise everything stays as a RAW within Lightroom with the edits being recorded in the catalog. This might be very different than your current workflow and is one of the hurdles new Lightroom users run into.

[ramseybuckeye]

Elements is a sampling of Photoshop Tools, Lightroom is a sampling of Photoshop tools specifically for digital photos with a much easier workflow and streamlined organizing and cataloging. It is a huge time saver.

[severalsnakes]

Otherwise everything stays as a RAW within Lightroom...

unless you import the JPEGs you create, then you can edit the JPEGs in Lightroom, too... Or did you mean something else?

Personally I could not operate without Lightroom, I use it for all image editing and organization. I also use photoshop but possibly on 5% of total images, maybe less.

Ditto. Lightroom does pretty much everything to my images that I could possibly want to do. Elements/Photoshop is better for adjusting/balancing specific color channels, in my opinion. Elements/Photoshop is also VASTLY MAJORLY IMPRESSIVELY better at clone/heal - Lightroom's "spot removal" is like a joke I just don't get.

[shaolen]

I use both (older versions of both) light room I use more for simple lighting and color adjustments. Elements I use for doing things like spot healing or replacing backgrounds and harder tasks. So I would say get lightroom to supplement elements

[jatrax]

unless you import the JPEGs you create, then you can edit the JPEGs in Lightroom, too... Or did you mean something else?

Correct, if you use a jpeg workflow, you can import those and work on them in Lightroom. I was talking about a RAW workflow. I know many who use Elements or PS itself and develop the RAW and then save as TIFF or PSD and work on from there. This is different in Lightroom where you just continue to work with RAW, no need for TIFFs. But there are many different workflows, and though I consider mine the best , everyone needs to find what works for them. You can save out as TIFFs and work from that but that seems to defeat much of the non-destructive 'script' nature of Lightroom processing.

Elements/Photoshop is also VASTLY MAJORLY IMPRESSIVELY better at clone/heal - Lightroom's "spot removal" is like a joke I just don't get.

Also, sadly, very true. Oddly in LR 3 and 4 the spot removal tool worked great. As in amazingly great. Then they broke it in 5 and 6 is if anything worse. How they can let something that is likely used on almost every image be so bad is beyond me. I still use it, but it is like getting a root canal.

[Joe Dusel]

I was using Aftershot and Paintshop Pro, which are very good; but then Adobe came out with the Lightroom/Photoshop deal for around $10 per month, and they are even better. Lightroom and Photoshop offer even more power and features. They are now an affordable and terrific value. Lightroom is a great tool, especially if you are shooting raw, and you should be. It is really nice to be able to adjust hundreds of images at a time using the sync function. Say you shot 600 pictures at an event. You can adjust the white balance on the first one, select all the pictures in the directory (or as many as you like) and then "sync" the whole selection. I only use Photoshop for touch-ups.

[Bengan]

I do suggest that you take a serious look at Lightroom, especially if you shoot RAW. The file organizing tools and batch processing capabilities are much better than the ones in PS Elements. Like Jatrax points out, it's also a matter of workflow.


Personally I use booth Lightroom and PS Elements and have adjusted my workflow to match. I find a number of tools easier to use in Elements and quite often also use layers (not possible in Lightroom). I use Lightroom for organizing and keywording (from a keyword list) and for adjusting exposure, white balance, white and black level, highlights and shadows, lens and camera profiles, etc. Then I export TIFF's ore JPEG's and do the final editing in Elements.


I got some useful pointers from this: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/32-digital-processing-software-printing/3...-workflow.html

[mtngal]

I've just run into a problem with the CC package - I've been camping for 10 days and haven't had any WiFi. The cell reception (when I had any) wasn't enough to use my phone for a hot spot. It won't let me get into Lightroom to import my photos and work on them! I've been using LR5 since I happened to still have it on the computer, luckily. I had thought I read that you had something like 6 weeks or more before you were stopped.

I hope to have Internet of some sort this evening, LR CC seems faster as well as having additional tools.

[kadajawi]

Also, sadly, very true. Oddly in LR 3 and 4 the spot removal tool worked great. As in amazingly great. Then they broke it in 5 and 6 is if anything worse. How they can let something that is likely used on almost every image be so bad is beyond me. I still use it, but it is like getting a root canal.

They did screw it up in CC too though... the new healing brush (IIRC) is terrible. Yes, it is fast, you get an instant preview, but the results... at least now the bug that leaves a white border around anything you used the healing brush around is gone, but it still isn't as good as the old option.

You could try the trial version of Lightroom, see if you like it. IMHO the main advantages are that it makes processing large amounts of photos FAST, that editing photos is faster thanks to a UI designed to do so and of course the management features. Plus you can always modify the files, you don't get unnecessary files you don't need, ...

Lightroom is a program that can't do everything you can do with Photoshop, but most of it. And what it can do, it does much faster, especially when dealing with many (similar) files.

Say you have taken 300 photos under the same light conditions. You adjust the white balance for one, select it and the other 299 photos, tell it to sync (white balance, or white balance and exposure, or whatever you actually want to sync). Done. 150 of them were a bit underexposed (you forgot to adjust the settings), so they are all similarly underexposed. Do one, select the remaining 149, sync exposure. Done. Are all of them keepers? No. But it makes selecting photos easier, if you can actually see them properly, and they don't get excluded for things that would be very easy to fix. You can sync fully edited photos too, of course, which may be all you need to quickly get through a lot of photos, or form a good starting point. Just like the presets.

Maybe Lightroom may be compared to the raw importer in Photoshop. What you can do there, you can do in LR. Just that with Photoshop you hit import and you are set, want to change something... start from scratch.

I mostly use Photoshop (and soon hopefully Affinity Photo... might jump off the Adobe CC bandwagon when it comes out for Windows... this year, they say) to retouch photos, as in remove unwanted things, maybe add something, ... everything else Lightroom does pretty well. I think a good, and affordable option is to use LR6 (unless you want to use LR on Android and sync it with the PC, then a subscription makes sense) together with Photoshop Elements or Affinity Photo. Or, if you don't need Lightroom (only do single images for example), Affinity Photo is worth a look. Apparently you can do the raw conversion in it too (no idea how good the converter is), but the beautiful thing is that you can do all the retouching, and then while retouching go back into the raw development tab and adjust settings there (like in Lightroom), and switch back to retouching. The 360° editing option is also very, very impressive.

[MikePerham]

I currently have photoshop elements 14 and am wondering if I would be better off getting Lightroom 6. Any advice?

Why not Lightroom CC. You get both Lightroom and Photoshop for US$10.00 a month and ongoing updates as they become available.

[aleonx3]

I use SILKYPIX (full version) for raw development, and then import to Lightroom for further processing and watermark. Photoshop is used when I need to some serious editing (great tool with plug-in Nik collection software). I found SILKYPIX by far the best for RAW development, much easier and more powerful (group adjustment and white balance) than Lightroom.

IMO, Photoshop Element and Lightroom are complementary products; one is a replacement of the other.

[YankeeDan]

I was avoiding upgrading from LR5 but found out that I could buy just the upgrade to LR6 without signing up to CC. I don't use PS much and want to be independent of the Creative Cloud leash.