(Today’s photo has nothing to do with the text below. I just wanted to share another Lensbaby shot) 🙂

Our digital group (DIG) meeting this week had one topic….Lightroom. Barry L. White, (our guru extraordinaire) gave an outstanding presentation which I’m sure inspired anyone in the audience who didn’t own Lightroom to run out after the meeting and buy it! Imagine working on an entire folder of images at the same time (including cropping), and then being able to print, send them via email or make a webpage without ever having to leave the program! The time saving advantage is tremendous.

Elements users already have these capabilities so after the meeting, several people asked me if I thought that Elements and Lightroom would be all they needed. My answer is: It depends. If you already use Elements and it’s been taking care of all your creative needs, then my answer is YES. It’s a perfect combination. Lightroom’s image editing and database capabilities are far superior to Elements so all you’d need Elements for is for any creative stuff that involves altering pixels.

If you’re a full version Photoshop user and you’re trying to decide whether you need to upgrade to CS4 or buy Elements 7, then again, my answer is: It depends. Do you regularly use Layer Groups? Do you regularly use Smart Objects? Do you regularly work with Channels? There are more but if you depend on these, then you need to upgrade to CS4 because Elements doesn’t have these features available.

HOWEVER…..Elements users DO have an opportunity to add some powerful Photoshop features so as a full PS user, check out The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements before you decide. These tools give Elements an impressive amount of power. Not quite CS4 but they might be all you need. If you are a current Elements user and you don’t know about this, check it out. It’s well worth adding to your copy of Elements.

Then I was asked if I knew whether Lightroom would retain keywords from Elements like it does from Bridge. I’ve been researching since then and although I couldn’t find a specific reference, my guess is that unfortunately it does not. Sorry. This means you have to start from scratch adding keywords. I wouldn’t let that stop you, though. As I mentioned previously, although you can also create a database using Elements, Lightroom is far superior. The time you spend now will serve you well in the future….especially with a growing library of images.

Finally….if you’ve never destroyed a pixel and don’t plan to, you might find that Lightroom is all you need 🙂