Editing Program:
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.
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 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.
Find it on Amazon.com here
ENJOY!
San Diego Photographer