Editing Program:
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
When it comes to editing your photos there are so many different types of editing programs that are offered it is hard to tell which to get. But, on the top of everyone’s possible choices are the dominant Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. So, which is better? Well, both being made by Adobe, they are not by any means the exact same program and actually have unique features in each that are for different aspects of photography editing. Therefore, this week we will be recommending Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.While both programs are beneficial, Lightroom 3 is specifically designed to feature and fulfill all of the day to day need of a photographer. Photoshop on the other hand was designed for visual artists, such as graphic designers. This is shown in the tools in Photoshop that are engineered for extreme editing and things like animation, 3D, typography, and other tools a photographer would not use on a regular basis or even at all. Even this basic description should prove just how independent each program is and how they were developed for their own specific niches.
The pros of Photoshop are that it is the world’s leading pixel manipulator, giving you the ability to control the overall feel of your image and gives you the opportunity to do artistic and creative things to your photos. However, for a regular photographer that needs basic and organized editing, Lightroom 3 is incomparable. It cannot only help you search, sort, and organize all of your image files, but it is extremely successful in organizing an efficient digital imaging workflow. Lightroom is programed to help you through the entire process of editing. Once you learn to use Lightroom you can easily and quickly empty your memory card, sort through your files, set your initial raw file conversion, alter aspects of the photo and finally send that new and improved photo to the web or your printer. Lightroom takes you through the entire editing process with speed and grace whereas Photoshop only functions as an image enhancer.Some of the other advantages of Lightroom are that Lightroom uses something called non-destructive editing, which means you always have the original. On the other hand, in Photoshop you have to work on a duplicate of the original photo or else you will permanently alter the photo and will never be able to work off of the original again. This is really important when you want to alter images in different ways, but want to always work easily off of the original.“By eliminating the need for duplicate images, Lightroom offers several important advantages over Photoshop:
1. Your hard drive won’t fill up so fast.
2. You can make as many versions of your original as you want without taking up much space. Lightroom calls these alternate versions virtual copies.
3. You won’t have several separate image files representing different versions of your photos to keep track of.
4. You can re-process the image – or instantly reset the image to remove all adjustments – at any time without any loss of quality” (Haynes, 2010, Photocitizen.com).
Lightroom 3 gives you a program that is simple and easy to use with all of the most advanced features available. These features include, but are not limited to: Cropping (rotation and leveling of horizons), develop module, spot and red-eye removal, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, exposure (auto-exposure), and color (adjusting saturation, vibrance, saturation, luminance, and hue of individual colors). These are basic to the everyday photographer and are not all that it can do.
Lightroom 3 can, also, add alterations to your photos that can usually only be done by equipment. This program can give the effect of a gradient filter similar to your lens, but much more powerful. This program also has local adjustments via the adjustment brush. This feature lets you manually make adjustments to small areas of your image including exposure, saturation, and more. It also allows split toning, which has become very popular in editing photos and lets you apply one color to shadows and another to highlights for a duotone effect. The features this program offers are endless and simple to use. Lightroom 3 includes over a dozen presets allowing you to play with all sorts of color and black and white effects. They also allow you to create and save your own personal presets!
Another awesome feature of Lightroom that sets it high and above is the fact that it is painless exporting files into the program and the application feature. This application feature means when you have a bunch of images that all need the same processing (For instance, the lighting on location made a chunck of your images too dark), you can alter one photo and apply that same correction to all of the other images with a simple click of the mouse!
Overall, Adobe Lightroom 3 has many slight differences from Photoshop and some very big ones that makes it overall the best editing program for the day to day photographer. It is easy to use, contains all the features you will need and more, organizes and creates an incredibly efficient workflow, and makes every photo look amazing! And on top of that, it has an incredible value and is substantially cheaper than Photoshop.
ENJOY!
