Inexperienced lightroom & CS3 user.

311

I will be making an order next week from adobe for my new machine.
I was wondering though ,is it worth going for the CS3 even if I'm not use to photoshop?
Would lightroom provide more interest for someone like me ,who is not into the minute details of everything.

I wreckon I have the interest in photography to benefit from photoshop ,but I'm not sure if lightroom would provide the same ,without the hassle ?

Sorry if this seems confusing ,I just thought someone might be able to answer:)

Thanks ,
Brian.

Fajitas!

Brian, if you go to www.adobe.com you can download 30 day trials of each - Would most likely be the best way to decide if it's worth the cash.

311

I downloaded both of them ,I may get the scott kelby book out now

Thanks.

311

I really like lightroom ,it's very easy to use . Would I be able to use lightroom to develop IR shots ?

latchiko

I guess it depends how you want to develop your IR shots. You can do everything to an IR shot that you can do to a normal one within Lightroom. Do you have something specific in mind that applies to developing IR shots?
I know that some people swap the red and blue channel of infrared shots. I don't think there is a way of doing that within Lightroom.
Lightroom is a great tool as long as you don't need to apply settings to a certain area of the image.

311

Thanks latchiko ,I haven't done anything at all with IR yet. I have a filter ,but I've not used it much.

I was hoping to do selective colouring ,so I'm probably wasting my time with lightroom.

Cheers

seanmcfoto

I've sent to IR Colour presets for Lightroom to Richard from http://inside-lightroom.com
Hopefully he'll put them up soon (I've asked him to do it quick!). These were developed to make the Red in HOya R72 IR images go to blue.
You can see an example here.
http://www.randompanderings.com/index.php/image/Majorca%20IR-150507-010/

Valentia

Very impressive Sean. I too have an IR ordered so will try out the preset.

Brian as regards LR and PS. Lightroom is a lovely programme though not worth the money yet. Still very clunky and buggy. Anyone that buys it to catalogue their files will be very disappointed and foolish. It has a bit to go regarding speed and reliability.

Adobe camera raw is the real engine behind the processing so PS CS3 will do that job as well but unless you can but it at the student rate it is a rip off for a casual user at the full price. Though I suppose most have other ways of acquiring it.

I often wonder if Adobe did their maths and reduced the price, I reckon many many illegal users would jump at the opportunity to buy it.

I have lost a lot of respect for Adobe since they released a beta version of LR as a full product. My whole perception of them as a company has changed and my conscience would be clear if I was ever tempted to go back and use "alternative" versions of their products.

seanmcfoto

As a tester in the process, I would have to disagree about Lightroom being a beta product. For a Version 1 product it's remarkably mature. Is it perfect? No.
Does it speed up my image workflow? Yes.
I have over 60,000 images in my main catalogue and the only issues I have with this are self generated. I don't keyword enough. But I can still find images remarkably quickly. FWIW, I used iView for ages, but still have good management with the improved structure of V1.1. So disappointed I am not, and certainly not foolish. YMMV. However I am on a Mac and will point out that it appears to be more stable on Mac than on PC.

latchiko

Valentia wrote:

I often wonder if Adobe did their maths and reduced the price, I reckon many many illegal users would jump at the opportunity to buy it.

This has crossed my mind on a few occasions also. At the same time, I'm sure that if Adobe wanted to protect their product from being used "unofficially" then they could easily protect it. I once read some speculation that the makers of another expensive product (3DS Max) weren't overly bothered about amateurs obtaining a copy of the product. This was based on the idea that if people became familiar with using the product and eventually went on to work in that field the product would become the industry standard as people have learned their trade on it so to speak. The developers of the software could then name their price for the companies/professionals using the product knowing that people could either pay it or train their employers in another product.
So, yes, if Adobe fully protected PS and released it at a reduced price I'm sure existing illegal users would buy it. But would up and coming newcomers to photography buy it?

Valentia

Interesting points from both of you.

Sean, I do believe that the Mac version seems to be way better than the PC version. I really don't have to use 1.1 for very long without finding bugs. I honestly can't agree that v1 was worth the full asking price, certainly not on a PC. I think most users outside the Adobe community would agree with that.

Guy Gowan, at our recent training day, gave a number of examples where features have been removed from CS3 and Bridge that you now need to use LR for. Sorry I don't remember what they were, but coming from a person who has contributed to the development of PS over the years I take him seriously. Another nail in the coffin for me, that a company can inconvenience the work flow of long-standing clients and hard working professionals so that they can promote their answer to Aperture. All of that said, I like the programme and use it a lot, but I'm not quite sure it does what it says on the tin, on a PC anyway. BTW I acquired it through being a RSP user so didn't get stung.

latchiko: Yep, what you say makes sense.

seanmcfoto

That's the first I've heard of things being taken out of PS for LR. The whole point is not to remove the need for PS or to create a need for LR, so I'm saddened to hear that.

While they were announce around the same time, it's been shown numerous times that it wasn't released as an 'answer' to Aperture. Besides, it runs on PC (albeit not as well as a Mac), where Aperture doesn't. Porting it to PC would be a lot of work too, because it relies heavily on Core Image (ie from the OS).

Out of curiosity, can you list some of the bugs? I'm interested in what may be issues and am in a position to pass them on.

311

Very interesting reading the replies ,my sister is buying me CS3 by the way and it's not costing the war. I couldn't justify software with that pricetag:(

Thanks for the insight