Lightroom 4 AND Photoshop?

Well obviously each program isn't exclusive to each, but Lightroom is clearly only aimed at photographers and of course Photoshop can edit photos in ways which lightroom cannot. Photoshop ( or photopaint, etc ) is therefore IMO the progam to goto when doign a lot of intricate and extensive work on a photo.

but for the vast majority of work one would need to do on editing a photoshoot of a lot of images lightroom is far more efficient.

Unless I'd played with Photoshop seriously I wouldn't understand a word you were on about. Sorry Opethian.

Yeah but i have trouble merging the layers after and most videos onthis show only
photoshop cs5 on a mac, spend hours only to not be able to merge the layers..

Have you thought of a Photoshop course? Or Martin Evening's book?

Merging layers is the click of the right item in a pull down menu, as is flattening the image prior to saving or printing. It's top right in your layers dialog box.

Is the raw coverter in photoshop and lightroom the same.
From what i can gleam from the adobe sites, they both appear far more powerfull than the one with elements.
I have all my images store in windows pictures libary and dont use the elements organizer, they just open in the editer.
If i use lightroom can i work the same way, or do i have to import all my shots in to lightroom.
Cheers
Dave

The RAW covterter in PS is ACR - Adobe Camera Raw. I thought Lightroom was basically a RAW editor in its own right, perhaps with more adjustments than most RAW converters?

There are plenty of adjustments in ACR and of course in PS there's not a lot that cannot be done with an image.

If I didn't need certain parts of the CS5 we use, I'd happily be using Elements.

Yes they are the same. EG: Hitting Help > About in Lightroom 4.2 shows both the Lightroom and Camera RAW versions in use. Mine shows "Camera RAW 7.2".

I'm almost certain that Photoshop Elements will have ACR as its core processing engine if only because it doesn't make any sense for one company to develop multiple RAW conversion solutions, but if you have an older version of PSE you will almost certainly have an out of date ACR version and will need to upgrade to a later/latest version to enjoy all of the current tools available in ACR.

It is Adobe's general practice to release a new major version of ACR with each new major version of Photoshop, after which, updates to older versions cease to be released.

Perhaps Help > About in your version of PSE will reveal the version numbers.

Yes, ACR is the core element of Lightroom

Lightroom uses a database ( catalogue )to store the edits to the images. So you initially create a catalogue and then import images from chosens locations. What import means is that lightroom scans the folders and creates thumbnail/previews or the images.

you then do your edits, keywording, geo-tagging, etc,etc and export the results.

Thanks
John, Mannesty and Smeggypants.
I have elements 10 and camera raw 6.2 i have tried to download 6.6 which i think is the highest you can use with 10 but have failed twice.
About importing my files i have a raw copy and a tiff in different folders so i would only need to import the raw folder "RIGHT".
Cheers
Dave

Yes and No.

If you only want to be able to edit your RAW data, just import the RAW folder.

However, Lightroom is not just a RAW converter, it is a fully fledged and very capable image editing suite. You can import and work on all popular image file types, including TIFF and JPG.

You will need to also import folders containing these files if you want to make further adjustments on them in Lightroom.

To explain a typical workflow:-

Import a RAW image > make a few corrections/adjustments.

If you then want to make other changes that are not available in Lightroom, Right click the image (in Library or Develop module) > Edit In > Choose your external editor (if supported by Lightroom).

Lightroom will now prompt you with a few questions, one of which is "Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments?". Sometimes this is the only choice available.

When you click Edit, Lightroom makes a TIFF copy within your RAW file structure and sends that to Photoshop etc.

When finished editing in Photoshop or whatever, the editor saves the changed image back to Lightroom.

Job done.

To expand on that, this means that as new cameras are released with revised image formats, older versions of ACR will not be able to work with them and you will be more or less forced to upgrade your Adobe RAW conversion software to a later/latest version.

A cunning plan, is it not?

I understand that there are always 2 distict versions of the 'ACR Plugin' available, both of which update at times. One version will work within Photoshop, and the other is specifically for Elements. When you buy either of the host programmes then you get with it the appropriate version of ACR at the latest update. So long as the RAW files from your cameras are supported by this version of ACR you don't need to update it, unless there are any other significant impovements.

You do not pay anything to update ACR - any newer version is free from the Adobe website. Sometimes installing it can be a bit of a business, you have to put it into the correct folder and remove the previous version, but are advised to keep the previous version somewhere else 'just in case'. If you do update the host programme, say from Elements 8 to 10, you pay an upgrade price and would also get the latest ACR version.

We've had a few discussions on this before, and there are significant differences in functionality between the Elements and full photoshop versions of ACR. The Elements version is a fairly basic RAW converter, with single slider operations for most key adjustments. Pentax users, be aware you will not have the Lens distortion / CA corrections, or shadow / highlight adjustments, nor any of the Custom Image Parameters from the camera. This would be true of the full PS and Lightroom versions of ACR also (but of course these programs will provide other means to make these sorts of adjustments). The full PS version of ACR has various additional and more sophisticated RAW conversion parameters.

I'm not a Lightroom user but I'm sure someone can fill us in on how the ACR plugin is implemented in Lightroom - I have heard it referred to as 'the develop module', whatever that means, and I'm not sure if ACR opens and operates in an individual manner, distinct from the main Lightroom interface??. In Elements & full PS, the plugin performs its 'conversion' of the RAW and opens the file into the host programme, to be edited in a conventional manner from then on. ACR does not then have any further role.

ACR is integrated into lightroom. i.e you don't have to open it seperately, it's always active. Non RAW files also run through it too.

the develop mode is basically the image editing module.