# LR or PS for advanced editing



## Nige' (Feb 15, 2017)

Did I make a schoolboy error?

In short, I was a relatively long-term user of PSE, and became pretty competent - but for various reasons I haven't done any processing in anger for about 4 years.

So, with a new machine and top notch specs I decided now was the time to use a, erm, grown-up program like LR - PS wasn't even considered due to it's relative expense. _[I so wish I'd familiarised myself more with perpetual v CC licences more before enthusiasm got the better of me_ ... perhaps?!]

So, I purchased LR [perpetual licence] and I'm now grappling with a Wacom tablet - using Victoria's lock-your-mouse-in-a-drawer philosophy! Harsh but fair. Anyhoo ...

One way or another, this past month or so has proven to have been a pretty steep learning curve [_more vertical cliff-face_], but did I make a mistake, or do I need to be more patient? The reason the doubt has arisen is that I'm not finding it easy to use the healing/cloning tools _*as I remember*_ using similar tools in PSE, even a goodly few years ago. [_And, clearly, layers_.]

I'm hoping it's more the latter, so patience and more practice is required. I just hope I won't regret not having access to PS. And I was a bit frustrated to learn that, even having only had the perpetual licence [_effectively_] for a couple of months, the purchase price/proportion thereof, wouldn't be transferable to the CC subscription model. [_During a quick online Adobe chat I was 'helpfully' told I could purchase PS, too. Uh, thanks!_]

So, given all the above, I guess the underlying question is ... am I ever likely to be satisfied with LR as a stand-alone [non-pixel based] editor? Or should I bite the bullet [_learning curves and otherwise_] and already be contemplating bringing PS into the editing equation via a CC subscription?

Any thoughts welcome.


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## Gnits (Feb 15, 2017)

I would be patient.  My background is application software and I found PS a mountain to climb.

The combination of Lr + PS is extremely powerful.  If I have 500 images from a trip, then Lr is the best tool to handle the bulk of my editing.  If I decide to produce a few high quality prints, then I will also do a round trip to Ps to use the tools there, mostly for tonal adjustments.

I tried real hard to like the Wacom tablet, locked my mouse in a drawer for 3 months ... gave up using Wacom when I discovered how good a gaming mouse (Logitech G500) experience was. I also ran into lots of Wacom driver issues.

Time spent learning the basics in PS (Curves, levels, layers, masks) and advance in due course to Luminosity masks will pay dividends downstream.

The hidden drawback of Elements (other than raw processing) is that it does not support greater than 8 bit file formats.


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## Nige' (Feb 15, 2017)

Gnits said:


> I would be patient...



I think, historically, PS has often had that mountainous reputation - essentially, a vast program of notable complexity, mostly the preserve of professional graphic designers, etc. and with a price tag to match. Hence the adoption of PSE by many photographers.

I was aware that PSE had lost some of its metaphorical torque, though, which was why I went straight to LR. [_A bit frustrating not to be able to work with and have the flexibility of layers, though.]
_
As for the Wacom, I did actually use one back in the day - albeit the mechanics were certainly simpler! - so I'm less concerned about that in the longer term. Don't appear to have any driver issues here, but it's early days!


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## Nige' (Feb 15, 2017)

Gnits said:


> I would be patient.  My background is application software and I found PS a mountain to climb.
> 
> Time spent learning the basics in PS (Curves, levels, layers, masks) and advance in due course to Luminosity masks will pay dividends downstream.



Oh ... just another thought on that. Had you yourself used PSE in the past? Just wondering, and notwithstanding its other many bells and whistles potential, if you did, would you say that using those basics would be a relatively painless transition for anyone familiar with PSE?

One prudent possibility, for me maybe, might be to be patient and get to grips with the new set-up and LR over the coming weeks and months, then maybe consider bringing PS into the mix a little further down the track, perhaps?


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## Gnits (Feb 15, 2017)

I dipped my toes into PSE a few times.  I always find it confusing going back to PSE.... usually when trying to help someone.

But understanding the basics of layers, curves, levels, masks is interchangeable base knowledge.

Move at a pace that is comfortable.


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## Nige' (Feb 15, 2017)

Gnits said:


> Move at a pace that is comfortable.



I think it's partly the frustration of not doing any processing for 4 years and an associated perception of wasting time - coupled with relearning something that's clearly not the equivalent of the age-old bike riding analogy! My use of the word _patience _was entirely an apt subconscious one, methinks! Normally I am pretty patient.

Thanks for the _interchangeable knowledge_ confirmation and thoughts.


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## Gnits (Feb 15, 2017)

Nige' said:


> I think it's partly the frustration



I truly understand this ..... but there is the prospect of satisfaction down the road.


If I need to do a round trip to PS (maybe 1-5% of my Lr images) I will do the bulk of my edits in *2 -3 minutes per image*.

The reason is that I usually know exactly what I want to do.  I have a home made simple action macro  which places a few curve layers, with different luminosity masks and a layer to allow me dodge and burn. My effort is focused on maximising the tonality in the bright, dark and middle tone areas.

Most of my edits are done with a large soft brush or curve adjustment and I do very little pixel editing. Very occasionally I may need to clone something out. If I am going to do a large high quality print on expensive paper, then I have a routine I use for printing (but actually print from Lr for lots of reasons).



I have got to this point by banging my head against the PS wall lots of times.  

My main criticism of Ps is that I cannot create a custom panel, with the half dozen tools I use 95% of the time, so I can clear away all the other panels on the PS GUI. This feature did exist, but disappeared when Adobe dropped Flash based features.


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## Nige' (Feb 15, 2017)

Gnits said:


> I truly understand this ..... but there is the prospect of satisfaction down the road.



I hope so! I hadn't expected the relearning to ride a bike would be such hard work ... just wish circumstances hadn't necessitated such a protracted absence.

_*{ Insert 20-20 hindsight here }*_

Interesting point about the custom panel. Such an option would certainly remove some of the potential bloat/intimating interface. But, I guess PSE would be part of their perceived solution there, too.


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## Tony Jay (Feb 15, 2017)

Unlike in the past where the utility of a raw converter was relatively limited - one did global tonal and colour editing (including white balance correction) and that was about it.
Currently things are a bit different.
Sophisticated regional editing is now possible with a variety of tools.
In Lightroom, even with the basic panel (if one really knows what the tonal sliders are doing) it is possible to mimic several patterns commonly employed by those who traditionally would have used curves to achieve the same effect.

Ten years ago I needed to round-trip about 25% of images into Photoshop to get what I needed.
Currently it is about 1%.

A pixel editor is always going to be needed for some tasks but my advice to you is to really get to grips with Lightroom.
Layers are not required (as per PS or PSE) for most editing requirements because of the non-destructive parametric approach that Lightroom uses. Lightroom is not just "ACR with DAM features" - yes the raw conversion engine and editing tools are almost exactly the same but Lightroom maintains an edit history and the ability to create snapshots and virtual copies. The power and flexibility of Lightroom's Develop module is often not recognised or appreciated by those who are used to a workflow dominated by PS or PSE.
In a year's time or so - once you have had the opportunity to really appreciate the warp and woof of the Develop module - you will have a much better idea of what is possible in Lightroom and what tasks will ultimately require a pixel editor.

I have great confidence in you - you clearly have a lot of editing experience under your belt. Lightroom allows unlimited experimentation and comparison of results (courtesy of snapshots and virtual copies) and so the learning curve can be relatively quick.

Whether one really needs a Wacom tablet to do edits is debatable.
Some people swear by them.
On the other hand I have never used one...

In summary - learn Lightroom really well, it will save one a lot of time. PS or PSE (or equivalent) is required for a small minority of images - for the foreseeable future I don't see this changing.

Tony Jay


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## Ian.B (Feb 16, 2017)

not sure if the clone / healing tool question was answered (??)
lightroom cloning is very different to PS and works totally different --- cloning is one of the few jobs many of us  have a PS program of some sort . There are few other options that do cloning, although PS is the best. Coral paint shop pro and the free GIMP program are OK . ON1 raw also has a cloning tool that seems OK but not up with  PS yet . I posted a bit of an early days report on that program earlier today. Serious editors will stay with Adobe ; but many (me too) seem a little concerned about the Adobe subscription  .

Any totally new program can be a very steep learning curve and LR is no exception ... can be even more confusing if you are used to using another program . I think many of us (me too) would have given up a few times but it is worth the frustration  in the long term . 

Plenty of clever kids and older blokes  here who can help you with any annoying little 'cannot work it out' questions


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## Nige' (Feb 16, 2017)

Tony Jay said:


> Ten years ago I needed to round-trip about 25% of images into Photoshop to get what I needed.
> Currently it is about 1%.
> 
> I have great confidence in you - you clearly have a lot of editing experience under your belt. Lightroom allows unlimited experimentation and comparison of results (courtesy of snapshots and virtual copies) and so the learning curve can be relatively quick.
> ...



Thanks for that invaluable and eloquent [_not to mention complimentary!_ ] response, Tony. I wasn't an early adopter of digital technology - I'm still sitting in darkroom [_gathering metaphorical processing dust_] as I write this - but I probably did a good 4-5 years with PSE. I don't recall the learning curve being quite as arduous first time around, but I'm probably weighed down by the desire to have a crash course in LR experience!

It's really interesting to read your 1% figure, though. And certainly encourages me to learn LR_* really well*_ ... despite Victoria's rather intimidating, although undoubtedly valuable, 600 page tome!_ "The power and flexibility of Lightroom's Develop module is often not recognised or appreciated by those who are used to a workflow dominated by PS or PSE..." _is particularly encouraging, too. 

All those days in the traditional darkroom has generally endeared me with a fastidious nature, so your thoughts have given more *confidence *to really get under the LR bonnet without looking over my shoulder.


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## Nige' (Feb 16, 2017)

Ian.B said:


> Any totally new program can be a very steep learning curve and LR is no exception ... can be even more confusing if you are used to using another program . I think many of us (me too) would have given up a few times but it is worth the frustration in the long term .



Thanks Ian! 

I think these were the sort of responses I was subconsciously fishing for in this alien environment.

In terms of cloning, I'm not/wasn't a big clone user - certainly in terms of removing significant objects from images; preferring to get it right in-camera, as it were! - but, equally, I don't want healing/cloning to be a chore, or have the results look obvious, and in the _playing around_ mode I've been in, so far ... it's all felt rather clunky.

So, hopefully, given a goodly sprinkling of months, it'll highlight that it's me that's mostly rusty ... and clunky!


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## Tony Jay (Feb 16, 2017)

Yes, thanks for the reply!

I would probably use Victoria's excellent tome as a reference not necessarily as an obligatory didactic cover-to-cover read.
Experiment first, do wacky and far out edits, really pull and push sliders all over the place to see what they do.
Build small hypotheses as you go and then consult Victoria's FAQ book for an in-depth explanations and compare her explanations with your understanding and build from there.

Look at Lightroom as an exciting video game that one can play in sandbox mode (as far as the Develop module goes anyway). Really let yourself go - when I suggested wacky and far our editing I really meant it! Learn from this, make all the mistakes - some of them won't be mistakes , in fact, but discoveries - every day you will consolidate your understanding. Remember you cannot hurt a pixel in Lightroom's parametric editing system! Even if you don't use virtual copies or snapshots if you don't like the result just use the reset option and try again!

In summary - look upon what you are doing as a game, it will free you up to experiment and have fun doing it. This is the way we learnt as kids - and I don't think anything really changes with age.

Tony Jay


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## Ian.B (Feb 16, 2017)

Nige' said:


> Thanks Ian!
> 
> I think these were the sort of responses I was subconsciously fishing for in this alien environment.
> 
> ...



the "I can fix / remove that later" thought is a big problem with digital for making photographers lazy today . Often it's just a step to right or left or back or forth that fixes  the 'problem' and something film user had to do 
back to the clone tool --- setting a low opacity and cloning several times will often give a smoother result. 
Also remember you can always "see" the cloning because you did it while others will likely never notice the cloning.
The viewer should not be able to "see" any edits done even if they  know the photo has been heavily edited. A little is a lot and the smoother the better when it comes to serious editing . This "not be able to "see" any edits" is why new many newbies get so frustrated with photography as their photos don't fall out of the camera looking like the stunning edited images they see on the web


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## Nige' (Feb 18, 2017)

Hmmmm ... not always getting email notifications to these. Apologies. But thanks to both of you for further thoughts - which I've only seen today. 

*Tony:* I probably do need to treat it more as a game, then I might stop feeling like the learning curve is a chore. [_Part of that was down to having a backlog of images from the past few years that haven't been edited; I've still been taking photographs, just not been in the position to process them effectively._] So, part of the frustration has been wanting to produce results, good results, uh, a bit too soon.

As for Victoria's book, when it arrived I quickly realised it wasn't going to be a cover-to-cover read!   Although the downloadable Quick Start Guide was more useful/digestible from a swift introduction and metaphorical out-of-the-box perspective.
*
Ian: *I'm very much old school - brought up on film/darkroom. And I wouldn't ever change that. In fact, don't laugh ... but as a dyed-in-the-wool B&W street photographer, for example, I even set my first Nikon DSLR to B&W mode at the beginning! However, by far the most important thing, regarding the traditional schooling, is that getting it right in-camera philosophy. Even now, I rarely press the shutter until I *see *an image unfold.

As far as the editing is concerned ... I did enjoy the lightroom experience, though. I'm not sure I'd want to return to those painstaking darkroom hours of dodging and burning. And I did enjoy using layers - to employ the use of textures - which created some nice effects [_when using the aforementioned dodging and burning techniques_] within PSE. So that became an enjoyable secondary creative process. However, the overall composition brain didn't change, and my eye didn't change ... which, as you suggest, possibly comes as a bit of disappointment to new photographers when their images don't come out quite the way the television/web adverts might have suggested! 

Anyhoo ... thanks to you both for your thoughts/encouragement. Upwards and onwards ... well, maybe sideways, for a while.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 21, 2017)

Nige' said:


> As for Victoria's book, when it arrived I quickly realised it wasn't going to be a cover-to-cover read!   Although the downloadable Quick Start Guide was more useful/digestible from a swift introduction and metaphorical out-of-the-box perspective.



LOL Try following the Fast Track section through the book. It goes into more detail than the Quick Start, but is still fairly quick to read. That'll get you 80% of what you're likely to want to know, and then you can go back and dive into the Q&A sections for more detail when something sparks your interest.


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## Nige' (Feb 21, 2017)

Victoria Bampton said:


> LOL Try following the Fast Track section through the book. It goes into more detail than the Quick Start, but is still fairly quick to read. That'll get you 80% of what you're likely to want to know, and then you can go back and dive into the Q&A sections for more detail when something sparks your interest.



Oh, righto. Thanks for the tip, Victoria. I'd actually put the book/processing to one side to currently focus on other more pressing issues for now, but I'll definitely do that when I pick it up again soon.


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## ChrisLF (Feb 26, 2017)

Nige' - if it helps, I started off in 35mm and left it some years before getting a DSLR. In fact I nearly didn't because when I started researching and buying mags I got disillusioned when I found that most images had been manipulated to some extent, which went against the grain being mainly a slide film user previously.

But I did buy one and then bought LR. Even being an extensive IT user at work I found LR difficult initially to understand and use but after repeatedly watching a then free tutorial and making notes I began to get to grips with it and now produce some good results.

I've now fully embraced being able to remove unwanted clutter and modify my images, but I still try and get the best I can to start with in camera and still try and avoid anything not wanted, including at the sides of the frame, but have to tell myself not to be daft and remove it later!

Part of my resistance was realising that to produce really good images you have to be good on the PC as well as with a camera, but I suppose that is no different to what was done in the darkroom - I only did a little B&W and thought colour too difficult, so using software is in fact way better for me.

And I'm going to buy Victoria's book!  

Chris


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## Nige' (Feb 27, 2017)

ChrisLF said:


> Part of my resistance was realising that to produce really good images you have to be good on the PC as well as with a camera ...Chris



Hi Chris. Thanks for your thoughts.

I think that's true but, as you say yourself, is also true of the darkroom; it's simply a case of progress. And while I really enjoyed my darkroom work - and was pretty good at it, too - having once made the leap to lightroom [via PSE], technically speaking, I'd never want to go back. In this particular scenario, I guess it's more my frustration that I was taken away from software processing for a number of years, and it's really surprised me how you lose the habit - exaggerated by then switching the software [from PSE to LR], too.

Personally, and although a very traditional photographer [B&W film and, like yourself, colour transparency], I enjoyed the 'lightroom' ability to manipulate images and actually be able to see what you were doing! I mean, clearly that can result in the potential sublime to the ridiculous and all stops in between scenarios, but it's certainly true that using software became a further creative process in and of itself. 

Oh. And I'd definitely recommend Victoria's bible-like tome. Sadly, it won't make you brilliant overnight [unless you're a very fast reader with a photographic memory and recall!], but if you're prepared to commit to the software then it'll help immeasurably.


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## ChrisLF (Feb 27, 2017)

Nige' - Totally agree about the ability to manipulate images and actually be able to see what you are doing. I'm quite good with LR now, though due to other calls on my time (as usual for most of us!) don't use it as much as I'd like - as you say leave it for even a short time and you start to forget things.

I'm very happy with some of my images and can produce ones that I couldn't have done in the darkroom due to lack of skill and knowledge. I have an eye for a picture and LR lets me achieve what I want. So, contrary to my earlier misgivings I absolutely love the digital and LR age now. Sometimes I'm a little disappointed that some images need very little tweaking! The result of my slide film days.

Fortunately, as I've got an understanding of LR now, Victoria's book will mainly be used for reference rather than full on learning! Particularly as I'm going to upgrade to LR 6 soon.

All the best for your getting to grips with LR. It really will be worth it.

Chris


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