On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Tom C <[email protected]> wrote: > I've recently started carrying a corporate laptop and have been > Photoshopless on the road. I downloaded CS5 trial, now expired, and > now have a trial version of LR3. > > I'm sure the differences between PS and LR have been discussed ad > nauseum, yet I'm still curious about how others feel they compare. ...
They are two entirely different kinds of image processing applications. While a good deal of the functionality overlaps, they address different aspects of the image processing need. Comparing them is akin to saying, "This one is a tool good for bringing wood into the workshop, managing the things required to make furniture, and then delivering the furniture. This other is a tool designed to finish the curves of the furniture's scrollwork, polish the surfaces, cut the glass to fit on top, and shine the fittings." If you're trying to make a living producing high quality furniture, you need both kinds of tools. Lightroom is an image management application designed to be the backbone of fundamental tools from camera to finished image files, and the repository for keeping track of them. It is designed specifically and exclusively for photography. Its design and organization is intended to assist photographers in managing and doing the essential jobs required to deliver finished images. Photoshop is a broad spectrum, extensible, scriptable graphics arts application with deep capabilities for pixel level and vector editing. It is designed for manipulating graphics entities of all types. Its "box of tools" design brief provides no specific guidance to efficient end-to-end workflow to get a specific job done for any potential graphic arts or photographic use: that has to be imposed on it by the context of an individual learning how to get a job done for themselves. I've been using Photohop since it was v0.45 alpha in 1990. I've been using Lightroom since the first developer beta release, prior to the Public Beta. Whether I like or dislike the particular UI design is irrelevant to me (I do happen to like it in general), Lightroom allows me to get much more done, much more swiftly, to one file or ten thousand files, consistently, repeatably, and in the process consumes less disk space while producing more finished work. In the three plus years since Lightroom 1.0 was released, I've *finished* ten to twenty times the amount of photographs I'd previously finished in the prior 16+ years of using Photoshop. I now use Photoshop as an adjunct to my photographic image processing to do deep pixel manipulation work (overlays, compositing of all kinds, creative sharpening, graphics annotation and such) that it is designed to do best. Lightroom does the other 99% of my work. -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
