Tag Archives: lightroom

Photoshop Elements and Lightroom – a perfect match?

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Globe Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)
Globe Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)

(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 🙂

LR2…Love part two


I still use Photoshop but Lightroom takes me over there. Here’s a shot of the options. Being able to load multiple image as layers is pretty darn cool! I create my masterpiece in Photoshop and then click “save”. No need to click “save as” because Lightroom2 is doing the saving for you. It will then save a copy and stack it (in the catalog) with your original.

For those who still wonder why you would want Lightroom2…..A big advantage is the space you save on your hard drive. If you save a Photoshop file with adjustment layers, you are creating a new file in addition to your original which can fill up your hard drive quickly. Lightroom adjustments are just EXIF taking hardly any room but having the same infinite editing control as adjustment layers.

The main reason I bought Lightroom1 when it first came out, though, was to be able to create a database. What is a database? It’s a visual catalog of all your images that you can view whether you’re connected to the drive with the images or not. Lightroom2 even tells you if you’re connected to the images and if not, tells you which drive they are located on. It creates proxies in a size that you determine. That means I could bring my catalog file to DIG, open it on anyone’s computer that has Lightroom2 installed and we could then see a copy of all the images on my computer at home.

If these things aren’t important to you, then Photoshop and Bridge will work for you.

lightroom 2

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I told myself I wouldn’t but after watching the video tutorials on the NAPP website, I upgraded to Lightroom 2 yesterday. One word….WOW! The first thing I fell in love with is being able to use both my monitors which means I have the light table open on one monitor while having a huge preview on the other (as shown above).

There are so many more really cool features that I haven’t tried yet. If they work, I’ll be using Lightroom for much more than just archiving now. By the way, I’m guessing that the new Bridge will probably have some of these new features too.