Lightroom 4 or Elements 11?

[Bugeye]

Looking at editing software. Bumped into a photographer near where I live and he suggested Lightroom.

Any example photos of your own work you can provide if you use these products?

Cheers

[wavemachine]

Lightroom is mainly for raw conversion although it can do straightening, cropping, spot removal etc. It does not support layers although I believe you can get addons for that.

Elements has raw conversion but not as powerful as lightrooms but it does have more powerful editing functionality.

It really depends whether you shoot in raw and what type of post processing you do, if you do a bit of everything then Elements would be your best bet or ideally both.

If you go to Adobe's website then you can download 30 day trials of both products and see how you get on.

I actually use lightroom with photoshop if I didn't have photoshop then I would use Elements as well as lightroom.

[Bugeye]

Thanks Wavemachine,

I shoot using jpeg. I will download both and see how it goes.

[donoreo]

I pretty much only edit in Lightroom. The only thing I go to Elements for anymore is content aware cloning. Everything else I do in Lightroom. LR is non-destructive so you do not need to use layers for every little change. That was one of the things that appealed to me. The other is the RAW processing being on par with PS CS.

[Bugeye]

Originally Posted by donoreo

I pretty much only edit in Lightroom. The only thing I go to Elements for anymore is content aware cloning. Everything else I do in Lightroom. LR is non-destructive so you do not need to use layers for every little change. That was one of the things that appealed to me. The other is the RAW processing being on par with PS CS.

So LR is suitable for jpegs? I personally do not want to 'over edit' my photos as I feel it distorts what is real (though some effects are appealing). RAW files also take up too much space and I would like a program that is relatively simple to use.

[wave01]

lightroom is just great but it is pricey. as long as you go for elements ver 9 upwards, which supports layers then i would think thats all you would need

[donoreo]

Originally Posted by BugEye

So LR is suitable for jpegs? I personally do not want to 'over edit' my photos as I feel it distorts what is real (though some effects are appealing). RAW files also take up too much space and I would like a program that is relatively simple to use.

It works on Jpegs just the same but there are so many advantages to shoot in RAW. Storage space is cheap and you can recover photos shot in RAW that you cannot in JPEG.

[donoreo]

Originally Posted by wave01

lightroom is just great but it is pricey. as long as you go for elements ver 9 upwards, which supports layers then i would think thats all you would need

LR dropped in price by half with version 4. In North America is is $149 for full or $79 for upgrade.

[ianpinion]

Lightroom is also great for organising your images into a logical order and improving your editing workflow. Used in conjunction with Elements it's about on a par with Photoshop CS for less than half the price.

[Markyboy1]

I use lightroom and elements 7 before I got lightroom I just had elements, my pictures have come on massively thanks to lightroom. I ant comment on photoshop because ive never used it. Also in lightroom you can work on j-peg in the same way you can work on Raw files

Mark