Lightroom 5, should I buy it?

[Wombat]

I'm slightly perplexed as to where Lightroom lies n the general scheme of things, and Adobe's website is not all that forthcoming (apart from telling me my account has been hacked...).

I currently use Photoshop Elements 11 to organise and edit my photos, and I do not use anywhere near all the features of the editor, but use the organiser as my main photo catalogue tool.  So, what is the purpose of Lightroom, I'm a bit unclear about it?  Is it for doing the everyday stuff in a quick and efficient manner, as that would appeal to me, especially things like the one click level correction I see it has.  I do need to be able to locate photos from the catalogue by scrolling through them chronologically, and often then fish them out to send to people, often at a reduced size.

is it a daft idea to use Lightroom and retain Photoshop Elements for detailed editing?  I'm just not in the market for the full blown Photoshop effort, even without it having gone to a rental basis.

It appears to be available for £71.80 right now, I'm tempted to do a "Oh, sod it, just buy it"...

Opinions?

[Biggsy]

The main purpose of Lightroom is to do RAW to JPEG/TIFF conversions while seeing a preview on the screen as you fine tune.

Same with Slikypix Developer Studio Pro (which I prefer, despite/because it being quirky).  I use it for JPEG manipulation as well, though perhaps it wouldn't be worth buying for that alone.

[mike]

lightroom does 99% of my editing plus archiving, tagging, preparing for print, web, delivery - everything.  It's significantly more than a raw converter.  The editing is actually quite powerful, it doesn't have layers but will do a lot of the editing photoshop or elements will do.

It's the best bit of software i use. Sorry Biggsy, I had silkypix bundled with an old camera and lightroom 5 blows it out of the water for speed, ease of use, features, everything.. I'm sure both do a great job with the final raw conversion but there's so much more to lightroom.

[Biggsy]

Sorry Biggsy, I had silkypix bundled with an old camera and lightroom 5 blows it out of the water for speed, ease of use, features, everything..

I doubt you had Silkypix Developer Studio Pro.  Cut-down versions of Silkypix were supplied with cameras, sometimes just the engine without the proper interface at all, let alone all the functions, giving Silkypix a bad name.  I find Silkypix DS Pro 5 beautiful to use, but it's a personal preference thing.



The display is customisable; each function can be shown or hidden and repositioned.



http://www.aguntherphotography.com/reviews/silkypix-pro-raw-converter.html

[Charlotte]

I agree with Mike.  I'm still on LR4 because I've not yet bothered to upgrade, but it's ace.  It's also a significant bargain because I use it for 100% of the images I make, whereas it's only the ones that need substantial work which find their way to Photoshop.

If you can afford it, buy it.  It's a no-brainer.

[T42]

+1.  Just now I'm using ACR/PS because I haven't had the leisure to get into LR, but it's on the cards for the holiday.  DxO & Nik filters in the offing, too, but LR as priority.

[Wombat]

Decision made, now to resolve the password for my adobe account, missing because a) the account was hacked, and b) I'd forgotten it anyway....  For me, Adobe is the easy way, as I'm used to their own slightly awkward interface.  I still don't see what's wrong with a few icons for everyday tasks, lie "save" for example.  Remembering keyboard shortcuts for a host of programmes is tricky.  Fine if you are a person who works with photoshop for hours a day, but I use various peculiar bits of stuff, and can't recall all their different shortcuts.

Hmm, amusing that the Windows download is twice the size of the Mac one.

We shall see...

[Wombat]

Well, I bought it, and installed it OK, and I just cannot get on with it, so far. 

How the hell do I get it to sort the photos and videos in the correct order?  They are sorted by capture date/time, and it insists that is the date the files were copied to the new PC, not the take it was taken according to the image data.  Its driving me up the wall, and unless I can get it to sort properly, it is utterly useless.  Photoshop Elements library is reading the same files, and it manages to sort properly...

Can anyone recommend a "How to drive Lightroom 5" book?  I've seen several on sale, but I am undecided as to which to get.

[Charlotte]

Do you import your files into LR5 or rely on it to go searching your computer for all images?  If it's the latter (I always do the former) I'm not surprised that it tries to make sense of them for you.

To learn LR, you can't beat the Kelby training stuff.  Online, you can do Kelby courses, or buy the book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photoshop-Lightroom-Digital-Photographers-Voices/dp/0321934318/

If you've got a Lynda.com membership, there's some great suff on there, too

[mike]

you've tried view / sort / capture time?

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/books/adobe-lightroom-5-missing-faq/ gets good reviews for a full 'FAQ' type book.

[Wombat]

I pointed it at my main photographs folder structure and told it to import that lot (about 27,000 photos).  I didn't fancy giving it the free rein of my hard disc, as there are a lot more images on there which are not general photos, but specific research projects and the like.  I've since managed to get it to sort by capture date (mostly), by telling it to sort by edit date, and then change it back to capture date (had to do this 3 times), and now everything apart from the avi files (which are filed together with the photos taken at the same time) are now sorted properly.  All other video formats are now in the correct place, but show incorrect capture date (i.e. as before, date of importing to the new PC when it was built)  I'm puzzled, as Photoshop elements just picks up the data off the files and sorts them all, videos included, by capture date unless you tell it otherwise.

I'll get there, but inconsistent behaviour between different Adobe suites doesn't help...

Thanks for the book tips, I'll have a peruse.  I did have a Kelby one for a much earlier version of Elements, and it seemed good.

[Maverick]

Another vote for the Kelby book to get you going but to really get to grips with LR5 I found the Jeff Schewe books (Digital Negative & Digital Print) first class.

[Tewdric]

What Charlotte said above.  Lightroom is a very well designed workflow tool from raw capture to finished print/website/book you name it. 

I learned a lot from Julianne Kost's official blog; she's an excellent communicator of concepts and knows her stuff. As long as you can bear the accent!

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/lightroom-training-videos