[nikonuser11]

had a trial of elements 8.0 and its pretty good for someone like me who know nadda about PP, however, just before I fork out over 100 euros for elements 8.0 should I get lightroom 3 instead?
My level is I open the pic and then I need my hand held to do ANYTHING

[shotokan101]

Personally I'd go for LR3 and see how you get on with it - if you need "proper" editing facilities though - selecting/masking/layers etc. then you'll need something like Elements - LR3 is mainly IMO about catalogueig and tweaking (quite extensively mind) your images rather than possibly being a bit more "creative" in your PP - e.g. adjustment layers type stuff.

Si I'd say go for the student/educational version of LR3 "first" and see if you find it limiting - sure you could sell it on easily enough if you weren't happy with it... of course trying the demo for a month may help you decide....

Jim

[senu]

Ideally both
However , if you want software fo cataloging ,dealing with many images in a slick fast way ( especially RAW), LR is hard to beat
For more creative oriented layer based editing .. PSE..

An ideal would be to get LR then get PSE 7 for not a lot
I have both + CS4 but use LR 95% of the time
As for knowing "nadda", there are websites, books You tube videos and indded ths very forum.What most folk do not have is the time to learn a few basics
I would suggest it would be time well spent and you will get out of it whatever you put in
You determine how much or how little you want to do. Some photo don't need editing,
Many could however be improved by just a little PP/Enhacement

[Mike.P®]

I think you need both as well but if only one then I would go for Elements.

I use both but could get by with just Elements, the same couldn't be said of just Lightroom as there is no proper clone tool (for example).

[weetsie]

what does LR do, not on about the editing but i see the word " catalogueing" alot and never really knew what people ment by it.

[Strobe]

@ weetsie - catalogueing: think of your computer as a huge filing cabinet with lots of drawers, folders and files with pictures stored anywhere and everywhere - catalogueing is like a huge index card system for that filing cabinet, it creates a database of all of the images using their exif data so you can immediately sort by, for example, date taken, camera name, etc (and so much more). Both Elements and LR do 'catalogueing' but LR is so much more powerful.

My suggestions to the OP:

(1) If you are just shooting jpeg's and don't have tens of thousands of photos to catalogue but fancy getting a bit more creative with your post-processing, get Elements (this is how I started with PSE3 right up to PSE8).

(2) If you are shooting RAW files and have a big collection of RAW files, get LR. Elements has basic Adobe RAW but the RAW editing in LR is so much more powerful.

(3) If you have a large collection of photos and want to get more creative with PP then, IMO, you need both PSE8 and Lightroom.

It also depends of course on your workflow and how much post processing that you do. I do 90% of my post-processing in Lightroom: photos get imported and I rename them them automatically. I do a quick run through of the imported photos and bin those which are obviously no-good. I then run through spending 10/15 minutes on each photo, crops, tweaking white balance, levels, etc, and that's it. I hate being sat in front of the computer so want life to be as quick and easy in this regard as possible. If the photo doesn't look 'almost right' from the outset I don't try and save it in PP I just bin it! However, if I do see a shot where I think there may be more scope for improvement or I want to be a bit more creative then I go in to Elements.

[nikonuser11]

Thanks all, elements it is

[senu]

Originally Posted by cherokee1111

Thanks all, elements it is

Great , as I said though, Elements is far more capable of more than basic editing
Spend some time learning it

[godsakes]

use lightroom if you can afford it

otherwise use picasa for free

[nikonuser11]

Originally Posted by godsakes

use lightroom if you can afford it

why?

[senu]

Originally Posted by cherokee1111

why?

LR is almost exclusively for Folk who are digital photographer. PS and PSE have wider creative applications
And there is an overlap,
I would say if you had to have one only get PSE but most folk who use LR tend to use it 90-95% of the time
It cannot replace PSE or PS for many things but I would reread Strobes post , It succinctly explains things very well
You can try LR as a trial .. or PM me if you need any help with it

[godsakes]

Originally Posted by cherokee1111

why?

lightroom & picassa are much quicker in giving quick edit/touch up to a collection of photos - the organising is much better and very importantly the changes/edits you make in the program are not saved on the actual image file so you always have the orginal - so there's no messing around creating backups and creating new edits.

i would give picassa a try, it's actually better at organising your photos, faster and more user friendly then lightroom and will do 75% of what people use lightroom for, but lightroom has far deeper options for tweaking an image. Either are more suitable for general photographic needs than photoshop.

to put it another way

if you're a photographer & want to manage/tweak your photos get lightroom or picassa
if you're a designer & want to merge lots of images/photos into 1 poster/leaflet etc get photoshop

[loafer27]

Theres also quite a big price difference too

£58 for elements 8 vs £211 for LR3 at current amazon prices

ive got elements 8 and its enough for me altho i admit i havent tried LR

[godsakes]

Originally Posted by loafer27

Theres also quite a big price difference too

true and one reason why i plug picasa, it's free

[Fred Quimby]

Would I be right in saying that the first and most important thing when using Adobe Elements 10 or Lightroom 3 is that when you import a photo onto the system you should make a copy of that photo before you start working on it.

I have just bought a Panasonic GX1 camera and including with the camera a free version of Lightroom 3. However I wont actually receive it until the end of March. I have never used Elements before, but now have it on my laptop. I intend to do a bit of reading on the subject.

What would you consider the 3 most important things when starting out using elements.

[Johnmcl7]

I was baffled by this topic for a moment but then I realised it's an older one, I was going to point out Lightroom is much cheaper at the moment with four on the way.

I wouldn't say you need to make a copy of the photo first but instead when you're finished don't save, instead save as a new jpeg somewhere else. Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

John

[craig1912]

Originally Posted by Fred Quimby

Would I be right in saying that the first and most important thing when using Adobe Elements 10 or Lightroom 3 is that when you import a photo onto the system you should make a copy of that photo before you start working on it.

Lightroom doesn't alter the original image so no need to make a copy

[Calzor Suzay]

Lightroom 4 got announced today and is supposedly 1/2 the cost it used to be

[Fred Quimby]

so thats why I was given a free copy of Lightroom 3 which I will not receive until the 2nd week of april.

I hope to use raw,when Im up and running. I might as well start a new thread for the Panasonic GX1.

[bluevortex]

Im curious, what does light room offer that Picasa won't?

[Fred Quimby]

I dont know as I have never used Lightroom. But at a £100 for the software it must do something Picasa does not

[wongataa]

Originally Posted by bluevortex

Im curious, what does light room offer that Picasa won't?

Much better RAW conversions, full colour management, much more printing options, better image management.

[shotokan101]

Originally Posted by bluevortex

Im curious, what does light room offer that Picasa won't?

Easier to download the demo and see for yourself - "lots"

[bluevortex]

Originally Posted by shotokan101

Easier to download the demo and see for yourself - "lots"

Unfortunately, I am a dinosaur and still running XP. I understand LR won't run on this OS. really, must get round to upgrading!