I’m learning to experiment more. And, that’s a good thing. Here’s why I say that. When I first started shooting digital I used Photoshop Elements 2 as my photo editor. Since I had the less expensive option to the full blown Photoshop package there were a few things I could not do. I therefore had a very simple workflow which meant I adjusted white balance in Nikon Capture then move to Elements. There I would crop, play with levels, saturation, and sharpen. Other than playing around with some filters, I’ve just stayed in that mode of post processing for the past 6 years. After buying the Macbook last fall I upgraded to Elements 6 and pretty much have the same workflow.
Lightroom 2 has changed all of that. The longer I play with it and learn what I can on the internet and from books, the power it has is amazing. The most important thing it’s given me is the comfort to experiment. In this image I played with the Clarity slider and a bit of added saturation. That’s it. Pretty adventurous.
It feels good to create an image that stirs something inside me and hopefully someone else.
I received an email from Adobe last week making an me offer to upgrade to CS4 for $299. I know that is a good price but wondered if the upgrade is worth it. Lightroom Secrets has a link to a website showing what application will not run on Snow Leopard. It shows Elements will not run on the OS. Looks like I may have to buy CS4. Can anyone give me some input?
6 Comments
Paul
Monte: I have CS4 and, truth be told, I rarely, if ever need it. Lightroom has so much power and flexibility that, in general, it’s all that I need. One advantage that CS4 has over Lightroom, IMHO, is in its sharpening. I just think that CS4 does a better job. Also, the plug-ins such as Neat Image and Noise Ninja are far superior to what LR can do, but these can be run as stand-alone applications, so CS4 is not needed.
If you are happy with LR and it suits your needs, keep your $299 or spend it elsewhere. You can get along just fine without CS4. The only reason that I upgraded was because I switched from Windoze to Mac and was using CS2 and couldn’t get a Mac version of that. 🙂 When I think about it even now, I wondered why I upgraded. As I said before, I rarely use it.
QPB
Monte, this is a really neat abstract. Really caught my eye.
I’ll be interested to see what feedback you might get on this. I am very, very happy with LR2, but often wonder if I’m missing out by not having anything more powerful than PSE6…but then again, since purchasing LR, I rarely use PS.
If you haven’t experimented with the graduated filters, give them a whirl–they are great!
Monte Stevens
@Paul: Thanks for sharing your experience and workflow. I’m leaning in that direction. One other thing I used PSE6 for was to cleanup dust but now that I have the D300 I almost never need that.
QPB: Thanks for your kind comments. I only have until the 15th to decide but I’m leaning towards keeping what I have and continue to learn more about LR2.
Earl
Monte, The upgrade being worth it or not depends on how much “experimenting” you want to do. If all you want to do is adjust the attributes of your photos then Paul is right, Lightroom will probably be all you need. However, if you think one day you may want to take it further and actually manipulate your photos at pixel level or do more advanced adjustments then Photoshop will give you those capabilities. Many of the better Photoshop plugins are now being released to work as external editors for LR which gives LR more capability. There are some duplicate features between LR and PS but both have their strenghts.
Personally, I use both regularly and wouldn’t give up either one, but that’s me. 🙂
Paul
Oh, and one more thing: That photo is beautiful!!! And, of course, Earl has a good point about it depending on what you want to do, but you can push LR pretty far.
Don
Monte,
Very nice images. I still use PSE 6 and am pondering where to go from here.
Don