Lightroom 3 vs. Lightroom 4

[Steve Goldstein]

So now that I'm getting this shiny new scanner (V750 Pro) I need to get some software. I doubt I need a full CS, but am thinking Lightroom ought to suffice for retouching old family photos (my wife's mainly, not commercial), basic adjustments on my to-be-scanned LF negatives, and simple editing of our travel digi-snaps. Maybe someday I'll scan my old 35mm slides, too, and her old color negs.

I see B&H currently list Lightroom 3 for $240 and Lightroom 4 for $145. It seems a no-brainer, am I missing something?

Oh yeah, WinXP if it matters.

[lbenac]

Steve,

I beg to differ. I found that CS5 is a blessing for its content aware spot healing brush tool. For cleaning a scan negative it makes life a lot easier. I found that I have my routine recorded as actions in CS and do not use much of LR editing tools outside of the split toning. My 2 cents.

Luc

[Corran]

No brainer? Correct because Lightroom 4 DOES NOT WORK on XP.

However, like lbenac mentions Photoshop is a much more capable piece of software for editing of scans, in my opinion anyway. Lightroom is for "digital developing." They really live happily together for different tasks.

[John Rodriguez]

Lightroom stinks for working with LF scans; it's way to slow compared to Photoshop. Lightroom doesn't use a scratch disc like PS, so you'll need a fast processor and LOTS of RAM to work on those files. It's also constantly making new preview files for you as you edit, and because it doesn't use a scratch disc, it's writing/reading to your file storage drive constantly while you edit. NOT FUN.

[Steve Goldstein]

Wow! I'm glad I asked! I guess it'll have to be C$something, which costs almost as much as the scanner. Sigh...

[Corran]

Try Adobe Elements. It might be just fine for what you need to do.

[J.Medlock]

My laptop is about a year old (Intel i7 processor with 8GB RAM) running Windows 7. My 4x5 scans from my V700 are about 30MB (4494x3551) and Lightroom 3 is excellent with these images. I recently upgraded to Lightroom 4 and it's just fine!

My vote is for Lightroom.

[Jeff Dexheimer]

I am running lightroom 3 and I think it works just fine. The only thing I use CS5 for is spotting for dust. You don't need a scratch disk if you work with a guide file. Check Ken Lee's site for a tutorial on working with guide files. His write-up is for photoshop, but the concept is exactly the same for lightroom. You simply two files for each image. One high res and one low res. You make all your adjustments on the low res image then copy and paste then to the high res image. Really easy to do and really efficient. In lightroom everything transfers perfectly.

[John Rodriguez]

J - try 600MB to 1.4 GB files...it's a different story.

Dexmeister, I'm a big advocate of using the guide file approach when you can, however it falls down if you need to start doing things like Apply Image in PS (not even available in Lightroom), or if you need to do roundtrips to different color spaces (also not something available in Lightroom). All of the develop module is available in PS through ACR, and there's a ton of really powerful tools that aren't available in Lightroom.

[Jeff Dexheimer]

I completely agree that photoshop is greatly more powerful than lightroom, but for what I do, lightroom with a guide file works wonders. FWIW, my scans come in at >500 mb and my guide file is >40 mb.

[J. Fada]

I use Lightroom 3 with 600 meg scans and don't have any real problems, only the occasional slowdown but that is on a new Mac stuffed with ram. Odds are if you are running XP your machine is older and might not be so smooth.

I personally think you only need Photoshop for retouching dust or scratches. I also do some global corrections in PS but generally find it faster to do most adjustments in Lightroom. I used to use Photoshop for retouching color in LAB mode but when I went to CS4 the dynamic sliders stopped working making my method pretty much useless. It wasn't fixed in CS5 either so I haven't bothered to update. I am pretty tired of Adobe in general I should say. Today I noticed that the color shifts between the develop module and the Library module. No excuse for that. Adobe applications are getting to be bloatware in my opinion. I don't know why Adobe locks down the color space in Lightroom either. I want to have a choice and I want to have control.

[John Rodriguez]

Yes, if you have a machine with a good amount of RAM you'll have better luck, also if you have your files stored on a drive with a screaming fast interface (Thunderbolt, eSATA, or an internal drive) things will be faster.

As to PS not being needed, that's all a matter of perspective. There are a lot of things that you may want to do to a photograph that just can't be done in Lightroom, but you have to know that A) it's possible to do them and B) how to do them. Some examples -

- Apply Image lets you take any one of the ten channels (RGBCMYKLAB) and stuff it into one or more of the other, using all the usual blend modes. Now if your'e trying to build a nice contrast mask you get there using applies of specific channels and overlays to get there, using only the best attributes each channel has to offer. Then you can integrate the final result as a luminosity layer so color isn't affected. You'll wind up with a level of control that just isn't possible in Lightroom.

- Curves. Lightroom until LR4 has only given you a single curve for your entire image; LR4 gives you RGB, but you still only get one set for the image, you don't have any overlay modes for it, and you still only have RGB. If you want to apply different curves to different objects in your image, you're out of luck. If you need to make a color correction to only a certain part of your image and also make separate contrast adjustments at the same time, you're out of luck. With PS you use one set of curves for contrast and another for color, and you can have as many as you need for your image. Also, if you need to use the black channel of CMYK to enhance shadow detail with more nuance then is possible in RGB...SOL again.

- Blend modes. There's way to many uses for these to mention. One simple example though, you can apply your sharpening to only lighten or darken, based on the subject. IE, if you have a dark object, you may want to control the light halos separately from the dark ones. This will allow you greater sharpening overall because you can back off in areas where it would otherwise be objectional. Also, there's Blend If, which allows you to apply adjustments only if certain channel conditions exist - say if the sky is a certain shade of blue, or only to dark areas etc.

Those are just scratching the surface. The point is, there's a lot more tools to get your photographs where you want them with PS, but you need to know where you want your image to go, then you need to know what tools can get you there.

[venchka]

Funny. It's good to be dumb and cheap.
Epson 1680 scanner
Lightroom 3.6
LR/Enfuse exposure and focus stacking Lightroom plug in, donationware
Microsoft ICE freeware
Windows XP
Works for everything I throw at it. 35mm, 6x6, 6x7 and 4x5. Oh, and Canon RAW files.

Wayne