Now I really did it

[dmc6469]

I was playing around with my camera and had it set to RAW and shot at a concert last night for a music website and did I change it back to JPEG? No. Left the settings in RAW so now I can’t upload photos to my online photo site. So I guess I now must finally get a photo editing software and need some advice. I play a little with Lightroom on my phone and like it but everywhere I read everyone is all about Photoshop. I was thinking of doing the Adobe subscription for $10/mo to try and see how those go before buying software. Question for you pros; since I really mostly do this as a hobby and sometimes will help the music blogs with photos and give them mine is the latest versions of each the ones that I really should get? I see that Lightroom has a new version that is around $150 on Amazon but the previous versions are less since they are “old” versions. But being that this would be my first time really playing with photo editing software do I need to get the latest and greatest or should I get an older version to experiment with and get used to and then eventually get a better version? And what do you find easier and better; LIghtroom or Photoshop?

 

[mom2rtk]

Have you used the 30 day free trial of Lightroom? I do all of my photo editing in that program and am very happy with it.

 

[dmc6469]

I actually went to download it last night and keep getting errors. I woke up this morning and it was at 42% and stopped. Said to hit the ‘retry’ button and I did that 3 different times; it kept having errors. I left it going when I left for work and hoping that I don’t get any issues and it will be done when I get home. So you like Lightroom better than PS?

 

[havoc315]

Lightroom and PS work together, as an integrated bundle.
For the $10 per month, you can get both. And you get all the updates, so you always have the most current product. It's actually a very very good value to just pay the $10 per month.

I use lightroom for 97% of my needs, and go into photoshop about 3% of the time.

Lightroom is for: Photo organizing, RAW processing, and simple editing (cropping, converting to B&W, red-eye removal, spot removal, some skin softening, etc). Lightroom, as part of photo organizing, is also how you upload your photos to social websites, etc. It can be integrated, to make it very easy to upload photos to photobucket or flickr, or whatever you use.
PS is for the more heavy duty editing -- Swapping heads, removing larger objects from a photo (I'll use Lightroom to remove small spots, but if I need to remove whole bodies, I'll use PS). Truthfully, I only use a small part of the power behind PS, it confuses me, LOL. Lightroom is a much simpler interface. I mostly just use PS for its content-aware deletions.

 

[dmc6469]

Lightroom and PS work together, as an integrated bundle.
For the $10 per month, you can get both. And you get all the updates, so you always have the most current product. It's actually a very very good value to just pay the $10 per month.

I use lightroom for 97% of my needs, and go into photoshop about 3% of the time.

Lightroom is for: Photo organizing, RAW processing, and simple editing (cropping, converting to B&W, red-eye removal, spot removal, some skin softening, etc). Lightroom, as part of photo organizing, is also how you upload your photos to social websites, etc. It can be integrated, to make it very easy to upload photos to photobucket or flickr, or whatever you use.
PS is for the more heavy duty editing -- Swapping heads, removing larger objects from a photo (I'll use Lightroom to remove small spots, but if I need to remove whole bodies, I'll use PS). Truthfully, I only use a small part of the power behind PS, it confuses me, LOL. Lightroom is a much simpler interface. I mostly just use PS for its content-aware deletions.

Hmm, maybe I will do the $10/mo plan. Might be worth it after all. Hopefully the download is going smoothly at home and I won’t get home to errors and it isn’t downloaded yet. Pretty easy to convert the files to JPEG?

 

[havoc315]

Hmm, maybe I will do the $10/mo plan. Might be worth it after all. Hopefully the download is going smoothly at home and I won’t get home to errors and it isn’t downloaded yet. Pretty easy to convert the files to JPEG?

It's automatic. Any time you expert a photo out of lightroom, it is exported as a jpeg.

So you import it into Lightroom as a raw file. You make any adjustments you want -- contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows... takes 10 seconds in most cases. Then any time you export the photo, it is export as a jpeg, with those adjustments in place. Easy as pie.

 

[dmc6469]

Easy as pie.

Oooh I like that a lot!

 

[pjacobi]

Canon or Nikon?

Canon provides DPP for free to process RAW image into JPG.

-Paul

 

[DSLRuser]

I only use lightroom and only shoot raw. I am not into "photo manipulation" you can do in Photoshop, but I do love the old school dodge and burn type editing you do in lightroom.

It was hard, but in 2012 I committed to only shooting raw and never looked back.

 

[manning]

If possible change it to a TIFF. It is a loss less format.

Every time you edit and save a jpeg you will lose pixel. IE a 20mp becomes a 16mp and you save again it is 12mp (numbers used only as an example.

If it is TIFF you won't lose the pixels every time you save it. IE 20mp stays 20mp, save it again it is 20mp etc.

 

[sharona]

I always shoot RAW + JPEG so that I can preview the pics on my tablet without having to download and convert everything. The free RAW converters available on Android are cumbersome to work with and I don't usually bring my laptop with me on vacation, just the tablet. Also, sometimes the JPEG is perfect as is and then I can immediately share it if I want to without any extra steps.