Post-processing: Photoshop or Lightroom?

[stevemart]

5 hours ago, Milo J said:

Completely unenlightened question: if I'm only shooting JPG, would Lightroom still offer good (easy / fast / preset) editing capabilities for things such as perspective, overall exposure, white balance and saturation? Or would I need to start shooting in RAW?

Currently I'm using Gimp and Preview. I don't do very much to my images. But I got the free license offer from Adobe.

You can take up Adobe's offer of a free app (valid 'til Feb 2022) or not but you cannot gift it to someone else or sell it, apparently.

[Former_Poster]

Is that new T&Cs?

Previously you were perfectly allowed to gift the code to someone else (i ended up with a LR/PS code and an all abode so gifted my LR/PS).

 

[stevemart]

7 hours ago, Former_Poster said:

Is that new T&Cs?

Previously you were perfectly allowed to gift the code to someone else (i ended up with a LR/PS code and an all abode so gifted my LR/PS).

 

Can only go by this on MSG:

 

[Former_Poster]

Fair enough, its a change of policy then.

The older deal FAQs specifically mentioned you could gift (but not sell).

 

[Rob Atherton]

On 2/15/2021 at 5:48 PM, Milo J said:

Completely unenlightened question: if I'm only shooting JPG, would Lightroom still offer good (easy / fast / preset) editing capabilities for things such as perspective, overall exposure, white balance and saturation? Or would I need to start shooting in RAW?

Currently I'm using Gimp and Preview. I don't do very much to my images. But I got the free license offer from Adobe.

You can use LR for post production work on JPGs but results may be limited. A RAW image will have all the information captured by the camera so you can make much bigger adjustments compared to JPGs. JPG is a compressed file format so only has the information for the image as it is seen. 

Personally, I open up my images in Camera RAW on Photoshop which cuts out the need for LR on single images. 

I still use LR for stitching photos together to make a panoramic image. You can use LR to apply the same changes to a batch of images. This is really useful when you want to create timelapse or hyperlapse video clips.

[Former_Poster]

You can do that via Bridge/ACR as well if you dont want lightroom.

LR stands out with rapidly editing a lot of images and then keywording.  If you're only doing a few images at a time its likely got no advantage over Bridge/ACR/PS.

 

[Nicholas Jefferson]

Lightroom excels at image organization and basic raw editing in a non-destructive environment. In recent years, they’ve made some monumental advancements in the Develop module that bring over the power of Photoshop.

For example: range masking in Lightroom is a basic replacement for luminosity masking in Photoshop. While the results won’t be as good as what you can achieve in Photoshop, it’s a huge leap forward as you can now tailor your adjustments to specific color or tonal ranges. It’s also a simple way to introduce you to the concept of restricting your edits to a “slice” of the value scale. 

I think if you start with range masking, you’ll see a huge difference in the quality of your processing.

This video here explains range masking in great detail: https://creativeraw.com/enhanced-processing-with-the-range-mask-in-lightroom/

[David A Litman]

5 hours ago, Nicholas Jefferson said:

This video here explains range masking in great detail: https://creativeraw.com/enhanced-processing-with-the-range-mask-in-lightroom/

Thanks for the tip - I have yet to try the range masking in LR but will give it a go!