Picture Style

[tekguy22]

Lol That's pretty stupid of me isn't it. I didn't know that if you shoot in raw, picture style doesn't matter. I just read somewhere that you can boost the settings in the different picture styles and it saves some time in post processing. Me being lazy and not that knowledgeable with photoshop, thought, what a great idea. Shows that I'm a dummie lol

I have a Canon too...and this is also news to me...awesome info!!

[AcadieLibre]

I rarely dispute anything that any of the senior members here say and all of you are very helpful but Lightroom/Aperture compared to Photoshop are similar in comparing MS Word to Indesign. While one can do the job and take care of simple tasks it really depends on what you want to do.

Photoshop is essential for professional photographers, IMHO. Lightroom and Aperture are great for quick editing but as far as printing and color management go for professional use, you cannot do without Photoshop.

The only reason I jumped in to disagree is because I think everyone that takes pictures should take the time to learn Photoshop. For minor tweaks, Aperture and Lightroom are fine, but if you ever want to be a pro - you gotta learn it. Photoshop, once learned, can be used just as quickly.

Aperture is fun, don't get me wrong... I actually love Light Table. Until the newest Aperture (2.0) it had little support and still lacks the support of Photoshop. I do like Aperture and if you just had it for now it will do.

I like Lightroom much more though.... if I could only have Lightroom and Photoshop I would never need anything else... umm... actually. I don't.

So, learn Lightroom and move into Photoshop... get yourself a membership at Lynda.com and learn the basics of Photoshop and you will be amazed at how fast you can still do simple edits... I use Photoshop for even minor tweaks, I have no reason not to... the others just have a more organic and faster 'feeling' interface.

Learn Photoshop.

I think you need to learn Photoshop, I just think Lightroom/Aperture are better to learn first, less learning curve. I know Photoshop and every photographer should know it, you are right but the learning curve is far larger and it takes a long time to become proficient at it. One should learn to try and get as close as you can in your original shot that Lightroom/Aperture can easily fix minor issues. Overtime as your proficiency grows with PS you can start to use it more and get the full use of it. PS is a must, it just the time it takes to learn it should be the second program you learn or in tandem with the one of the other two. Just too many people get into photography and think PS will fix the poor photos, learn to take good photos then learn to manipulate and correct the image.

[Ben H]

Lightroom is *brilliant* for workflow - organising and managing hundreds/thousands of images, doing basic adjustments like exposure and whit balance, and being able to quickly update thousands of files with those kinds of adjustments.

Now with Lightroom 2, the adjustment brush and other features mean that you can do localised editing (gradients, dodging/burning and so on). While I love the feature, and use it a lot, I do find the performance bogs down heavily whn using the adjustment brushes in anger - and I'm on a MacBook Pro so it's not exactly a slow machine in general.

Photoshop is killer for working on *single images*, especially when you need to do more complex things, like retouching, comping and manipulating pixels.

The two apps have different focuses, and which will be useful to you will depend on what it is you want to do.

If you want to do photo management, RAW tweaking, basic adjustments with the odd more sophisticated tweaks, and want to print, slideshow or create web galleries, then Lightroom is probably you're best bet.

if you want to do extensive image editing and creative stuff, and don't really have workflow management issues, then Photoshop is a better bet.

[baddness]

I started off using photoshop. Still lots of learning with it. I downloaded a trial version of Lightroom 2. Couldn't wrap my mind around that one although I heard that it was easier and faster. I just downloaded Gimp but it won't open up my raw files. I don't have the time to spend editing photos so I thought that if I could learn how to shoot better I won't have to do a whole lot to it after. Lazy I know That's why I asked the question about picture style.