# Pros & Cons of using  Photoshop CS6 or PSE11 ?



## f64 (Dec 12, 2012)

I use Lightroom3 for most everything but there comes a time when you just want to remove or clone some elements in a photo and photoshop seems to be the better program.
I wonder if I need to eventually make the huge investment in CS6 to correct those few things those few times in your photographs?   Would using PS Elements 11 do the job?  Lightroom is 64bit on my Mac and I understand that elements is not.  PSE11 works in 8 bit files instead of 16 as in LR & CS6.  Would jumping from LR to PSE 11 and back reduce the image quality or be a poor exchange even using the "tiff" file format ?  I have used older versions of photoshop on PCs but never Elements.    I guess that CS6 is the best compliment to Lightroom but is it worth the cost?


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## donoreo (Dec 12, 2012)

It depends on what you need to change.  The only thing I ever go outside LR for is content aware cloning.  I use Elements for that with a TIFF file.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 12, 2012)

That certainly is the debate!  Personally I've never managed to get along with Elements, but I'd used Photoshop first.  If I was coming to it the other way round, it may have been a different scenario.

The Photoshop downsides are the price (obviously) and the vast learning curve.  Soooooooooo many tools!  On the other hand, it offers a great deal of flexibility.

So I'll agree with Don - how much do you think you'll need to use it?

As an Adobe girl, I probably shouldn't be saying this  but the other program I've had my eye on is Pixelmator.  Looks like it's come on leaps and bounds, so might be worthy of consideration now.


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## f64 (Dec 14, 2012)

OK thanks for the quick response.  My whole digital experience with photo editing and restoration has been with Photoshop.  Recently using Lightroom as I said works great for most editing.  I guess what i am asking is would using PSE 11 have an adverse effect on your images since it is not using the same 16 bit color range as LR?  I did a lot of photo restorations in photoshop and would use either Elements or CS6  for the same as well as take care of those specific edits that LR seems to lack.  If I could get by using elements for now I would hold off on investment in CS6.  I have looked into Pixelmator but that too is using 8 bit files.  I also want to have a program that would work efficiently on the same desktop with LR.


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 14, 2012)

If you're doing the major colour and density adjustments in Lightroom and then just using Elements for retouching, it's unlikely that you'll see a visible difference.  The places it could show up smooth gradients (i.e. skies) or when making major adjustments in Elements.  Why not download the trial and see how you get on with it.


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## f64 (Dec 18, 2012)

Yeah, that may be a good idea...from what I have learned about PSE version 11 there seems to be some very similar capabilities and tools as in Photoshop so maybe that will do the job.  Thanks


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