Lightroom or Elements 5.0?

I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
over the other?

JJ

Lightroom has far more limited image processing options than Elements.
Lightroom seems to be intended for cataloging photos and making limited
global adjustments to groups of images exposed under identical
circumstances, as in a studio shoot.

babaloo wrote:
> Lightroom has far more limited image processing options than Elements.
> Lightroom seems to be intended for cataloging photos and making limited
> global adjustments to groups of images exposed under identical
> circumstances, as in a studio shoot.

I don't think there's any software for converting RAW images that has as
many global adjustments as has LR. It's also a very good
catalogger/image manager, with a wide range of sorting and keying options.

--
John McWilliams

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:24:09 -0700, jj@unspameljefe.net wrote:

>I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
>for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
>range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
>over the other?
>
>JJ


What do you want to do with it on the road? Preprocess RAW images or
produce final output? Why not get both? They complement each other.

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:44:00 -0400, Oliver Costich
<ocostich@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote:

>On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:24:09 -0700, jj@unspameljefe.net wrote:
>
>>I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
>>for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
>>range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
>>over the other?
>
>What do you want to do with it on the road? Preprocess RAW images or
>produce final output? Why not get both? They complement each other.

At this stage I'm making the big leap from film to digital, with all
new gear except for the laptop. So I'm not exactly sure what I'm going
to be doing yet. My educated guess is I'll be downloading from the CF
cards every night, doing some tweaking on a few images, batch
converting everything to 6MB jpegs for the client, and backing
everything up to DVD.

I can get the Elements upgrade for $80. LR is "on sale" at Adobe for
$200.

JJ

I would go with Elements. I think you will at least at some very soon period
of time you will need the other tools it offers that LR doesn't. LR is nice
but it isn't a full fledge image editor. Elements will also let you catalog
your images quite nicely as well. As for RAW processing you can use Adobe
Camera RAW so you aren't really loosing anything there either and that means
that if Adobe releases it as an update (I don't know if they will or won't)
you should be able to us ACR 4.0.

Robert

<jj@unspameljefe.net> wrote in message
news:v5f823pf7qf7v74qsq373ptvo7qis592eb@4ax.com...
> I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
> for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
> range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
> over the other?
>
> JJ
You need to decide what you want to do, LR is a photo processing program.
Elements is more photo manipulation/artistic. Think of it as LR being
anything you could do in a darkroom and Elements in an art studio.
Rob

It happens that jj@unspameljefe.net formulated :
> I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
> for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
> range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
> over the other?
>
> JJ

I find that Lightroom runs painfully slow even on my 3.0 GHz Desktop.
I'm sticking with Elements 5
ed

"Scubabix" <Scubabix@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:o8qdnV5Fkt0kGLjbnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>
> <jj@unspameljefe.net> wrote in message
> news:v5f823pf7qf7v74qsq373ptvo7qis592eb@4ax.com...
>> I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
>> for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
>> range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
>> over the other?
>>
>> JJ
> You need to decide what you want to do, LR is a photo processing program.
> Elements is more photo manipulation/artistic. Think of it as LR being
> anything you could do in a darkroom and Elements in an art studio.
> Rob
>

Except that Elements can do most everything that LR can plus more. Not quite
as non-destructively, but the new adjustment layers in 5.0 get you pretty
close. If he just needs to catalog, organize and adjust exposure and color
LR would be fine. If you need more than that Elements is a better choice and
it is cheaper. LR should have been the same price as Elements in my opinion.

Plus if you can use ACR 4.0 with it (this depends on how soon Adobe will
have Elements 6.0 out) then you do have nearly all of the features
(adjustment features) that LR has.

=(8)

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:49:52 -0700, jj@unspameljefe.net wrote:

>On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:44:00 -0400, Oliver Costich
><ocostich@NOSPAMcomcast.net> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:24:09 -0700, jj@unspameljefe.net wrote:
>>
>>>I've got to snag a graphics program for a laptop PC (1.6ghz, 1gb RAM)
>>>for use on the road. Lightroom and Elements 5.0 are in my budget
>>>range, and seem to have some things in common. Any advantages to one
>>>over the other?
>>
>>What do you want to do with it on the road? Preprocess RAW images or
>>produce final output? Why not get both? They complement each other.
>
>At this stage I'm making the big leap from film to digital, with all
>new gear except for the laptop. So I'm not exactly sure what I'm going
>to be doing yet. My educated guess is I'll be downloading from the CF
>cards every night, doing some tweaking on a few images, batch
>converting everything to 6MB jpegs for the client, and backing
>everything up to DVD.

I'd suggest you download the trial versions, install both and see what
you need. The trials are fullversions with a limited life.

>
>I can get the Elements upgrade for $80. LR is "on sale" at Adobe for
>$200.
>

If you have a student or teacher in the family, you can get Lightroom
for $99.