Lightroom -- keep it or sell it?

I bought Lightroom when it was on sale at Newegg for $149. I also got CS5 at the same time. I've temporarily stopped trying to use Lightroom and am just using Bridge to look through images.

If you use both Lightroom and CS5, can you tell me (not asking for your personal workflow) generally what you do with Lightroom? Is there anyone here who has tried to use both and eventually stopped using Lightroom?

Basically, I need to decide whether to keep it or try to sell it.

Thank you.

You can certainly use Lightroom to "look through your images", but you're missing the fact that Lightroom can be used to edit images non-destructively, keyword images, search and organize images, print images, etc. Many images could be edited, etc. in Lightroom without ever using Photoshop.

Why would you not want to keep lightroom and sell CS5 instead? I get a headache every time I try to use CS4. My CS4 is not even currently loaded onto my computer. Some of my friends who have both prefer to use lightroom with certain plug-ins.

Alan points out one of the tremendous advantages of lightroom but for myself lightrooms power is in it's cataloging abilities, I too just purchased lighroom a month ago and have been amazed at how it can organize and catalog very large numbers of image files. I initially imported just over 20,000 images and immediately was aware of it's abilities. That's not even mentioning the keywording advantages. Once you start building up a large amount of files you simply will not be able to do in bridge what you do in lightroom. For myself the editing abilities is secondary but I'm seeing it really does do a great job and will be using it more I'm sure. I'm just sorry I didn't start using it when 1.0 came out.

I'm certainly in the minority here, but I have never really seen the need for Lightroom. I tried it for 30 days under the free trial and I wasn't impressed at all. IMO, they either need to add features so that you don't need CS5, or either include LR within CS%. Too much duplication of services for me.

Since you already own Lightroom, I would strongly urge you to learn its' capabilities and keep it. Lightroom's two biggest strengths are the Library module for digital asset management, and Develop (Raw processing). While Develop and Adobe Camera Raw share the same code underneath to support it, the interface in LightRoom's Develop module is far superior to ACR. Lightroom, by design, also keeps the history of all your your raw processing steps which allows you to go back and review when you learn more about what works and what doesn't.

The power of Lightroom's Library module is the basic design of Lightroom. It uses a catalog to manage / keep track of / find / etc. your images. Here's the simple analogy I use when I teach my LightRoom class. Think of a library from years ago that had a card catalog to keep track of the books in the library. The card catalog contains information about the name of the book, the author, the number of the book which references a section of the library to help you locate the book, etc. That information is the metadata about the books. The physical books are on the shelves in the library. The Lightroom catalog is the card catalog, while the books on the shelves are your images. Using LightRoom to manage your images provides a lot more power than Bridge can since bridge does not have a catalog, it just has the books on the shelf. If you do a search in Bridge it must search the files (books). If you do a search in LightRoom, it searches the catalog. I'll stop there with that advantage, but there are many more. Haven't even touched on the Slideshow module, the Print module and the Web Module.

For me, LightRoom is an integral part of my workflow. It does not replace Photoshop in any way shape or form. I believe folks who say that don't need Photoshop because they have LightRoom don't understand the capabilities of Photoshop, and those that believe they don't want LightRoom because they have Photoshop / Bridge don't understand the capabilities of LightRoom.

You already own LightRoom. Keep it. Learn it, and I believe you'll be happy you did. You do realize the magnitude of the learning curve you've already taken on with Photoshop CS5, a new camera, lens, LightRoom, technical photography, etc. Give yourself time, you're going to need it.

While I do have both LR and CS4, I rarely use CS4 and will certainly not upgrade to CS5. I do 99% of my editing in LR, but as mentioned above LR's real strength is in Cataloging and key wording capabilities. I used to use ACDSee Pro but it was completely lacking compared to LR. I will probably never totally give up photoshop but my workflow is much smother with LR.

Agree with all of the above but don't forget that LR3 has excellent editing capabilities. In fact, a number of pros do 90% of their editing it. There are number of good books on it but also Lynda.com has some tremendous (and cost effective) on line training on the subject. I have CS5 and regularly edit images as smart objects coming directly out of LR3. Most of what I do there, I actually do using Nik Software superb plugins.

Barbara, I'm going to be the big jerk here and go against the flow... I just want you to hear both sides. Lightroom is a photographer's tool, no doubt, and all of your edits are non-destructive. Plus it has awesome cataloging capabilities. It's truly like a digital darkroom, plus it makes it easy to create web galleries, etc. And for many, it's ease of use is a dream come true. But for me, that's where it stops. If that's all you need, great. But Lightroom does not do layers nor does it have the layer mask capability of PS, and that makes LR about as useful to me as a rusty razor. But I learned something else: the combination of Bridge and Photoshop CS5 will give you all of the well-loved features of Lightroom, even cataloging and non-destructive editing, if you take the time to learn the tool. And I'm even talking about sharpening with USM non-destructively using Smart Filters. If you hadn't purchased CS5 then I agree, you'd want to weight the benefit vs cost. But you own it, you have the best tool in the industry, why not pursue that? OK, I admit, I'm biased: I dedicated a fair amount of time to Photoshop over the past 5 years and last month I did pass the Adobe Certification exam for PS CS5, but it was during the preparation for that exam that I learned just how powerful this tool is, and with ACR and Bridge your options are limitless. You already own PS CS5, I say make that your tool for post production, and once you do you'll never look back. Yes, Lightroom is awesome for what it was designed for, but the limitations don't cut it for some folks. For nature work, being able to blend exposures and selective focused images in layers is paramount.

OK Lightroom users, start blasting away!

I will add one more defense for LR: somehow, some way, I've started shooting weddings, something I never thought would happen. Lightroom makes the post-processing of 1500-2500 images HUGELY easier, the PS/Bridge combo isn't the tool of choice there. Keep Lightroom like Keith suggested, you'll probably find that you'll use both. For nature work, I'm biased for PS.

(Oh, one final thought: there is a DVD set out there that will get you into PS CS5 expert mode the easiest and fastest, right here on Amazon. There is also tons of training at Lynda.com for only $25 per month, but I'm not a huge fan of the teaching style of the main fella they use, Deke McClelland, although others may like him a lot. But I found this DVD training to be incredibly well done because the teaching is superb.)

Another big fan of Photoshop here. Aside from the robust image cataloguing capabilities, PS can do everything that LR can, while the converse is most certainly not true. As your talents progress, you'll find the capabilities to use layers and layer masks (among many, many other things) to be invaluable. If I photographed dozens or hundreds of images a day, I could perhaps see owning LR, but I'm just not that prolific.

That was funny Paul, after naming 5 etc. benefits of lightroom you decided that was enough before saying you didn't need it. But then you did go on to name a few more. Made me laugh! But I have to disagree with the statement, "the combination of Bridge and Photoshop CS5 will give you all of the well-loved features of Lightroom". They simply can not, unless you get Adobe to rewrite them with lightroom features.

How do I use Lightroom? First for cataloging my images. If you are just "looking through" your images with it, using it like an image browser, you are missing its real power. Keyword, categorize & rate your images as you download them from your memory cards and you will be able to quickly find anything you want using its search functions. Second I use it for processing images non-destructively. Instead of making actual copies (which eat up more HD space) to create multiple versions of an image I can make "snapshots" or "virtual copies" which are merely sets of instructions to be applied to the original file as you open it. I only open a file in Photoshop (which creates a new copy of the image) when I need some unique capability of Photoshop. That's about 10% of the time. If you don't use layers you can get by with only Lightroom just fine. There are some non-layer adjustments that I prefer LR's tools for. In fact I know photographers who don't own Photoshop. They use Lightroom exclusively. After all Photoshop is a multipurpose program for not just photographers but also illustrators while Lightroom was designed exclusively for photographers.

And then there are the slideshow, print and web functions in Lightroom that Photoshop doesn't have at all. None of the above is meant to denigrate Photoshop. It is great software and I own both but... if you think LR is Photoshop Lite, you haven't learned to use Lightroom. IMO you should.

Agree with all of the above but don't forget that LR3 has excellent editing capabilities. In fact, a number of pros do 90% of their editing it. There are number of good books on it but also Lynda.com has some tremendous (and cost effective) on line training on the subject. I have CS5 and regularly edit images as smart objects coming directly out of LR3. Most of what I do there, I actually do using Nik Software superb plugins.

Barbara,

I find myself using PS less and less as I discover the capabilities of LR. I have added several plug-ins to LR, one that lets me work with layers, albeit, not as robustly as with PS. I can access my NIK plug-ins in either LR or PS. The same is true with plug-ins from onOne and with my HDR program. I wouldn't have invested in many of these programs if I weren't already very committed to using LR as my first line of processing. Before LR, I used Bridge. Now I find it, at least the last incarnation of it that I used, to be pretty clunky in comparison. Also, I no longer have to deal with ACR as a prep program for loading images into PS. I still use PS a great deal. As Paul points out, there are some things that give better control for adjustments in PS. But I think you'd be missing out an a very useful program if you didn't spend some time learning to use the Library and Develop modules of LR.

Regards, Craig

A quick question or so here about LR which I do not have (I use PS5). Do you folks use the method of keeping the images "out of LR" or do you import them into LR. Seems there use to be an issue of the LR catalog(?) file becoming too huge...maybe that was LR1.0.

What happens if you are storing the files "outside" of LR and then you move the files to another drive?

Has anyone had a LR catalog file corrupted? If so, then have you lost all your edits? How about keywords and metadata (or does LR actually open the image and write it in the image file like PS)?

I could probably find this online somewhere but thought I might get a quickie answer here. Thanks!

Troup

To address Troup's questions. I have two lightroom catalogs with about 6,000 and 10,000 images in them respectively. I've been using LR for about 2 years now and have never had a problem with corrupt files or catalog size slowing things down. One does need a powerful computer though. A good processor and lots of RAM makes a big difference.

I had the problem of moving files to other drives when upgrading my system a couple of times. I had to look up how to do it but the process was straightforward and error free.

You can set preferences for when you want to back up your catalogs. I have LR remind me once a week so I have recent enough backups for my purposes. Also I regularly backup my drive contents to external disks as one should do for any files.

As for LR vs PS, I see them more as a team with LR being the more important aspect. I use LR for cataloging and 95% of my processing. I even create my website directly in LR using web engines from The Turning Gate. Each version gets more powerful and PS becomes less important to me. I really only use PS for layers work and I prefer PS's clean-up tools to LR's. Now with onOne's Perfect Layers plug-in at around $100 I'm considering whether or not I want to upgrade PS any more or just phase it out. Maybe I'll wait and see what LR 4 has to offer.

Re: Troup's questions:

-I've been using Lightroom since v. 1. I store my 80,000 image files outside of Lightroom on two internal hard drives within my Mac Pro. Since Lightroom generates parametric data for images, its catalog file is relatively small. Mine is 1.2 Gb. The Preview file can be large (mine is 41 Gb) but you can choose to make that much smaller in preferences. I have lots of storage capacity so it is a non-issue to me.

I've never had a corrupted LR file and have never lost any edits, even though I am a heavy user. You can choose to put all metadata in a .XMP sidecar file or have it written into the image file in a proprietary manner. I do .XMP files. I backup the catalog and all image files regularly on external drives.

I've moved my baseline image files to newer larger drives over several purchase cycles over the years. Generally you just point LR to the new drive location. It is not a problem as long as you keep the structure as-is. LR reads your Finder or File Explorer architecture and presents it as "Folders" within LR. I use LR Collections more than anything for asset management. A simple trick to maintain seamless upgrading of hard drives and LR is to rename the new drives with the same name as the old drives.

As for advice for Barbara, it really depends on her requirements in software and image management. Some folks just need simple image browsing capability. If she is already familiar with CS then use what you are comfy with. That said, over the years, I've held many sets of hands of savvy photographers who made the mental transition to Lightroom. It takes at least a month or two for many to wrap their heads around digital asset management and personal workflow creation. Some folks just aren't up for that level of planning and detail, after all, this is about photography and not computer data modeling, so to each her/his own.

Lightroom's editing capabilities are excellent, but it depends on what your processing needs are and how willing one is to learn new tricks. I've been using Photoshop since the late 80s when I was a corporate beta tester on Windows 2.x (!) and have watched it grow in some good and some not-so-good ways. Ninety percent of the time Lightroom suffices. Fortunately the interface between Lightroom and Photoshop is near seamless; for many shooters Photoshop Elements would work as well.

The whole layering capability of Photoshop is becoming less relevant by the month. Lightroom has plenty of layering and masking functionality in the adjustment brush, but it being newer is unburdened by the yoga of dealing with layers as presented in Photoshop. Of course you can do a lot more in Photoshop, but my goal is to move beyond it. If one really needs layers, Onone Perfect Layers provides that functionality with a clean interface with Lightroom. I also think sharpening, NR, and printing in Lightroom is superior and not by a little.

Many of us have a list of functions that we would like to see in the next version of Lightroom. I'd like soft proofing, better cloning and healing, better color replacement, and more refined creative sharpening. Photoshop is an amazing piece of software and I'm glad to have it around when it's needed; I just like minimizing that need as much as possible.

ME

We don't use LR for image management because there are too many computers (7) in too many locations (3) in our system. If there was some reasonable way to network them it might be a different story. But it is nonetheless a good addition to our image processing "quiver." It does some things better than PS and Bridge, some things less well. I know folks who use all three on an image in some cases (my wife is one), or at least open the image in each as a part of their evaluation. I seldom seem to get around to LR unless an image is giving me problems I can't solve in the other two, but that doesn't mean I'd part with it.

IIRC my wife's inspiration or portal into using all three was an article by JP Caponigro, either in Professional Photographer or one of the pro Photoshop mags. He demos and compares the use of each for image processing and especially sharpening, and builds a compelling case for doing things as my wife does. Results speak for themselves. I wish I could find the article and provide a specific reference for you. All the same I heartily recommend you plumb his writings for discussions of the three before making up your mind.

Hi Barbara I as well own both Lr 3.5 and PS 5, I use both but LR mainly as many of PS plug ins are now available for LR. and I like that LR is non destructive to my files if I feel like playing around with them. Ultimately you have to chose the work flow that is for you but LR is worth keeping if you already have it.Cheers

If you keep it you will be able to upgrade to version 4 at a reasonable price. What's coming next? Layers? Adobe must be tired of folks plugging 3rd party software into it by now.

I'm an Adobe DNG file format fan. I use LR for all my initial image import, global adjustments, and metadata assignment. I save all of that back to the DNG. The DNG file can be opened in CS5 via Camera Raw if I need/want to do more fine tuning with layer masks and/or need the more advanced tools of PS and then save that to a layered PSD file. Lightroom is excellent for quickly syncing metadata or selected adjustments to lots of images at once. It is also great for exporting lots of watermarked images for web display or to send to clients. I encourage you to spend some time learning LR. It is well worth the time now that you own it.