Photoshop vs microsoft office picture manager

[alcina]

Are you able to just alter the color is certain areas with lightroom? On a different thread there was a picture of a barracuda and a wreck at different distances and one was able to alter the color/tint/etc at the barracuda and adjust it to a different amount on the wreck.

This sounds like something that required layers. If so, you need photoshop or another editing program as well as Lightroom. You can fiddle with the sliders in the split toning section of LR - it's pretty cool.

Also I see these pics with deep blue backgrounds. Is this a photoshop alteration or is it the skil/equiptment/luck of the photographer?

Hopefully it's done underwater, in camera. Higher shutter speeds will give you a deeper blue than slower shutter speeds. It's all about balancing your light from all sources to get the effect you want. Read lots of threads, the Sticky and any books you can lay hands on (in the Sticky there are quite a few listed so it's a good place to start).

It can be done in Photoshop etc, but it rarely looks very good, imho. I'd imagine it also takes a tremendous amount of time - I'm just not that interested in learning that much Photoshop LOL

 

[Riger]

Scotty,

In Lightroom (LR) you can only target specific areas of the image with a few tools like;

• spot removal
• cropping
• red eye removal.

With regards to the colour corrections, you can target specific colours and alter their hue/saturation/luminance.

Like you I questioned this 'difference' but after much discussion on photography forums and trying it out, it became obvious that this is not photoshop, it is Lightroom, a different product with a different purpose.

Of course there will be some who still prefer photoshop, or who keep photoshop as an option for some images.

Hope it works for you.

Best Regards
Richard (Riger)

 

[alcina]

Maybe to help clear things up a little bit - Lightroom and Photoshop are designed to work together. Lightroom is not a replacement for Photoshop.

If anything, Lightroom most closely resembles Bridge/ACR that comes with Photoshop CS2/3.

Lightroom allows organization of images as well as non-destructive editing. Photoshop and the like allow for layers, manipulation and more advanced techniques of developing.

Think along the lines of LR is choosing & developing the film - Photoshop is printing it. Really overly simplistic, but might help clear a few things up

 

[Riger]

I agree with Alcina except to say (add) that the printing module of LR is really good ....

-Edited to add-

I have found that using Lightroom allows me to run a very confortable workflow;

Very quickly sort through a batch of images, remove the bad ones, adjust the cropping and leveling (composition if needed), apply wholesale WB and colour corrections and assign keywords.

I listened to a series of Podcasts by the Adobe development team for Lightroom and it does put the build concept into perspective.

The way LR works is just a little different to PS and that seems to throw some users a little off balance (including me) until the "penny drops". Unfortunately, I think there are many that, once they have been put off balance, go back to PS and do not look back to LR. I think that LR will be the Standard for photographers and PS will remain the "specialist" tool that you can go the extra (artistic) mile with.

If at first it does not work for you, I strongly advise you persevere just a little and give it a chance. There is much more than meets the eye with LR.

Best Regards
Richard (Riger)

 

[Diver Dennis]

I use CS2 but I'm not using it anywhere near it's capabilities, just a few basic adjustments. I'm going to check out Lightroom.

 

[alcina]

I agree with Alcina except to say (add) that the printing module of LR is really good ....

LOL like I said, it's an overly simplistic view.

And I didn't mean "printing" printing. I meant the things that one does to an image before printing - dodging, burning, cloning, layers, masks, text etc...all those things that were done in the darkroom at the enlarger