Photoshop CS6 vs. Photoshop CS3/CS4

**neil poulsen** · 17-Jul-2014, 04:25

Is the noise reduction capability "in" Photoshop actually part of ACR?

**Greg Miller** · 17-Jul-2014, 04:30

Technically no. Once you are in Photoshop, then ACR is no longer part of the equation (unless you opened the image (from ACR or Lightroom) in Photoshop as a "smart Object"). It's possible that they use the same noise reduction algorithms in both ACR and Photoshop, but it is extremely rare for me to have a noise issue, and so I really don't have much knowledge about the noise reduction functions.

**neil poulsen** · 17-Jul-2014, 04:33

Originally Posted by Oren Grad

Photoshop and Lightroom are different animals - to oversimplify, one is a heavy-duty editor, while the other is a fancy catalog which happens to have a less-powerful editor built in. I'm not interested in Lightroom's catalog functions, at all, and I'm not interested in having to wrestle with them just to get access to ACR. It doesn't matter to me that the editor functions added to Photoshop since CS3 don't add much of value to me - I'd still rather use a Photoshop-type program. If and when CS6 breaks and takes ACR down with it, I'll probably go to a freestanding raw converter plus a separate editor (for example, Raw Therapee plus PictureWindow Pro) rather than adopting Lightroom. YMMV.

I know that for my camera, there are 3rd party converters (e.g. RPP) not from the original manufacturer that do a better job of conversion than ACR.

**Adamphotoman** · 17-Jul-2014, 08:14

I run both 5.5 and 6.
Older versions will not make use of more ram. That speeds up my process a lot. But newer versions will not run some of my plugins such as Pictocolor's "In Camera"
The content aware keeps getting better and there is a significant improvement from 5-6
Grant

**Oren Grad** · 17-Jul-2014, 08:44

Originally Posted by neil poulsen

I know that for my camera, there are 3rd party converters (e.g. RPP) not from the original manufacturer that do a better job of conversion than ACR.

Exactly. The ACR/PS workflow is very convenient, but if and when the time comes, there should be other good options available.

**SergeyT** · 17-Jul-2014, 19:53

Originally Posted by Adamphotoman

I run both 5.5 and 6.
Older versions will not make use of more ram. That speeds up my process a lot. ...

Make a RAM Drive (18+Gb)out of your free memory above 6-8Gb and make CS-3 use that RAM Drive as a scratch disk. You might be surprised with the speed it gains