Photoshop or Lightroom or Aperture????

Barack Obama

I'm confused! I'm just jumping into post-processing and thought that Photoshop was the way to go. Now I see that Adobe have released Lightroom, specifically for digital photographers!

How does Apple's Aperture stack up against these? Which should I go with??

Thanks

Masada

I dunno about the Apple stuff but lightroom and Photoshop are completely different things. lightroom is a bit of an obvious one, you can play with the lighting levels, exposure, contrast, crop etc etc pretty good program.,

Photoshop is more about manipulating an image, adding things, cloning things out etc but it has a load of the thing you'll find in lightroom too. I use both myself.,:)

Barack Obama

Masada wrote: »

I dunno about the Apple stuff but lightroom and Photoshop are completely different things. lightroom is a bit of an obvious one, you can play with the lighting levels, exposure, contrast, crop etc etc pretty good program.,

Photoshop is more about manipulating an image, adding things, cloning things out etc but it has a load of the thing you'll find in lightroom too. I use both myself.,:)

Thanks Masada

Is there anything that Lightroom does that Photoshop can't? I.e. - if I take the Photoshop route, will I be missing out on anything?

Gregor Samsa

Barack Obama wrote: »

Is there anything that Lightroom does that Photoshop can't? I.e. - if I take the Photoshop route, will I be missing out on anything?

Lightroom (and Aperture) is primarily a photo management tool - it allows you to store and catalogue your photos. It also has various (and fairly powerful) editing tools for post-processing, but not as wide a tool set as Photoshop. Think of them as professional versions of iPhoto.

Photoshop, on the other hand, is an image manipulation tool, primarily designed for creating and editing images. You can basically do anything with an image, but it doesn't have the photo management tools (well, it has Adobe Bridge, but that's nothing like Lightroom - it's basically just a file browser).

A lot of people would use Lightroom (or Aperture) and Photoshop together - you import your photos into Lightroom, add keywords, etc, and then you can do some post-processing (noise reduction, cropping, red-eye removal, change contrast, brightness and colour settings, etc).

Then, if you wanted to do some serious image editing (say, removing the telegraph wires in a landscape shot), you'd go to Photoshop.

Personally, I use both Lightroom and Photoshop (but I'm a web designer, so Photoshop is basically my adopted brother), but for most post procesing stuff, Lightroom does everything you need, and it has the the photo management stuff which is pretty much essential.

So, if you just get Photoshop, you're missing out on all the photo management tools. There's nothing worse than just having all your photos stored in folders on your hard drive - specific photos become impossible to find. Of course, iPhoto does a fairly good job, and most cameras come bundled with some kind of photo management software, but Lightroom and Aperture offer a lot more than these.

Photoshop is exceptionally powerful, but can be a bit daunting for those new to it. Lightroom and Aperture have the post-processing tools presented in a more "photographer friendly" way.

As for Lightroom vs Aperture, I went with the former simply because I got a discount on it when I upgraded Photoshop, so it was very good value. I'm not sure of the pros and cons between the two (I researched them at the time, but it was a few years ago), but I'm sure there's comparison reviews to be found on the web.

Note: since you're talking about Aperture, I assume you're using a Mac (it only runs on the Mac), which is why I keep mentioning iPhoto (ditto).

Gregor Samsa

By the way, you can download demos of each of the applications and see which ones suit you:

Lightroom: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/ (free adobe account required)

Aperture: http://www.apple.com/ie/aperture/ (Mac only)

Photoshop: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/photoshop/ (free adobe account required)

Also, if you're thinking of buying soon, aperture was upgraded to version 3 last week, so there'll be no new version out for a good while.

Lightroom 3 is due out soon (you can download a beta here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ expires April 30) but the release date hasn't been announced yet.

Barname

Lightroom is due a new version soon, if you are going to purchase it, hold off.

Photoshop is great if you like to work with graphics also...

I dont know anything about Apples Aperture.

take care

Kev.

Ive used all LR and Aperture but not being too professional Ive returned to IPhoto on my Imac.....


It does what I want it to do so Im happy...