Photoshop Creative

Now might be a good time..........it's on sale at Amazon today for $189.99.

That looks like a pretty good deal, Sunny. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Sunny,

THANK YOU!!!

I saw your post in time, yesterday, to get in on the deal. I had received an Amazon gift certificate for a Christmas present, so my out-of-pocket cost was even better!!

Byron

What exactly is lightroom?

Think of LR a bit like ACR on steroids, and a whole lot more. It is used for quickly processing your photos as far as exposure, color correction, white balance, tone, etc, and etc, and etc. It also has its own catalog system and keywording. You can do collections and that with it also. It was designed primarily for photographers who take a lot of pictures and want a way to quickly process them. You can adjust one shot of a series taken under similar circumstances and then with just a couple of mouse clicks apply those adjustment to the entire set. It is non-destructive, meaning that your changes are saved in the LR database but not directly applied to the photos until you either export them, or send them to PSE or CS for further processing. You can at any time, with just a click, revert back to your photo as it came out of the camera. LR will not allow you to overwrite your original files, either accidentally or on purpose. LR is not, however, for doing all the creative stuff that you can do in PSE and/or CS, although it does have a lot of flexibility. LR2 has brushes where you can do quite a few local adjustments on you shots, including gradients, cropping, red-eye removal. And more. Lots more.

For more info, check this out.

I don't do a lot of the creative work that most of the people here on the forum do, but I do take lots of pictures and LR is perfect for what I do. It does have a learning curve, but if you are already familiar with ACR (especially ACR in CS) it shouldn't be that hard to learn. You can download a 30 day trial and give it a spin if you think it might be for you. You can find the download here.

There is a host of online material for training and add-ons available for LR. I am at work right now and don't have all my links available, but you can find Matt Kloskowske's LR Killer Tips blog here.

So check out the links I gave you, download it and kick the tires on it for your 30 day trial to see if it would fit into your work flow.

Thanks for the great decription and links Gene. I have always wondered about Lightroom.

You're welcome