| Captivelight PRO Sun 19th Jul 2009 06:28
|
Lightroom is a Raw conversion program, which has a powerful set of image editing tools built in, as well as an image management system, and some other little tricks. It means that you can work directly from a Raw file from start to finish whilst staying within the same program and without going to a Jpeg or Tiff state until the image is complete. Some people swear by it as a stand alone product that makes Photoshop redundant...
BUT......
Personally I love Lightroom as a Raw Converter. It's a typical Adobe product in that on the learning curve it's pretty easy to get started, but then the learning curve becomes steeper when it comes to mastering it. I prefer to use it alongside Photoshop, so my basic workflow is to open Raws in lightroom, sort, classify and tag the images with their keywords, clear out the trash images and do the basic editing in lightroom. This basic editing will be colour temp, shadows/highlights using fill light recovery curves etc, saturation and vibrancy. When the basics are done I export the image as a Tiff and switch to Photoshop for final tweaking, such as any layers works, sharpening, resizing etc. I find Photoshops tools easier to use and far more capable for this sort of thing.
Is it worth it ... yes... if you shoot in Raw. It is 2000% better then the software that came with the camera for converting Raw files ...
|
173,285 members
2,597,202 photos
6,996,360 comments
