Photoshop Insider

Some Quick Tuesday News

By Scott on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 7:05 am | updates.

Here’s some quick news:

I ran across this blog this past week, and I just really found the photography interesting. It’s called “The Landscapist” but it’s not your typical landscape photography site, and I particularly liked their vision statement, which is, “Photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful, because what is true most often is beautiful.” There’s just something about their stuff I really like. Give it a look-see right here.
If you want to learn more about Kevin Connor, who as you read in the previous post is being inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame next week, he was interviewed last week on the Inside Digital Photo Radio podcast, and Kevin has some insightful comments on the future of digital imaging. You can listen to the interview online by clicking here.
Yesterday Jason posted a comment here on the blog, asking about my personal workflow. His question was:”…I am wondering whether you use both Lightroom and PS for workflow, or if you find yourself using one more than the other for basic workflow? I realize this may be putting you in something of a quandry as much of your support comes from “The Adobe Mothership” and you don’t want to alienate one product line over another equally deserving one, so feel free to email rather than post a response…”Jason; I’m happy to share my workflow (after all, that’s my job). I do the bulk of my work now in Lightroom, including processing my Raw images there, and I would say I probably spend 70% of my time there. I do nearly all my printing in Lightroom because personally I think it kicks Photoshop CS3’s butt when it comes to printing for photographers.The other 30% of the time I spend in Photoshop CS3 doing finishing work. Some photos never make their way to Photoshop CS3 at all, and my entire workflow for those is within Lightroom, but there are so many things that you need Photoshop for, that I jump back and forth as needed. So, in short, my digital photography workflow uses Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 together (I can’t imagine using either alone anymore–they work best as a team), and I know some people at Adobe will cringe, but I rarely use the CS3 Bridge at all.
Once I started using Lightroom, I looked at the Bridge differently; I use it when I need to quickly find one or two images from a shoot (let’s say I went out shooting, and I need to find one image to quickly email to an editor—that’s when I’ll pop open the Bridge, or if I need to find an image on my drive and I don’t know which folder it’s in; then I’ll use the Bridge).

I think the Bridge is still very useful for graphic and Web designers, and people using the entire Creative Suite, but for photographers, I think Lightroom just blows it away (and then some). There you have it–I hope that helps.

That’s it for this Tuesday. Tomorrow I’m on my way to Chicago for my one-day Lightroom Live Tour on Thursday. If you’re coming to the event and you’re a reader of my blog–make sure you stop me and say “hi.” Have a good one.

Comment form for this post

^#1

Lke you said on photo talk radio a few weeks ago, the key is to get the picture right in camera so that you don’t have to spend so much time at thecomputer and can spend more time doing the thing you truely love which is taking the pictures. A followup question for you workfow might be: out of x number hours of shooting or pictutres how much time do you spend on the computer?

Chris on August 28th, 2007 at 8:35 am

^#2

Hi Chris:
You’re right—I’m a firm believer of “Get it right in the camera.” I hate doing production work and fixing things I could fixed when I took the shot—I want to do fun things in Photoshop—not tedius photo fixing.

As for how long I spend on the computer; I really enjoy the process of sorting the photo (Finding the keepers), and I only actually “Develop” the very shots from the shoot (which is usually a very small number of images), so I don’t spend nearly as long as I used to behind a monitor, and that’s mostly thanks to Lightroom (and I think less time in front of the monitor is actually a good thing).

Thanks for asking.

-Scott

Scott on August 28th, 2007 at 9:25 am

^#3

Scott,

Thanks for sharing your workflow. I have a question, please. Disregarding the speed of saving print formats in Lightroom for certain prints and perhaps other time saving features, as far as the quality of the print, do you believe the Lightroom produces a better print than Photoshop with basically the same settings? I am a bit concerned about not being able to actually see on screen the effect of “print sharpening” in Lightroom before printing and believe that unless you have already spent a few hours analyzing the effects of each level of print sharpening, you really are in a position to waste a lot of paper. In Photoshop, print sharpening is “real-time” and I don’t have to wait to print the photo to see the effect.

Would you mind sharing your thoughts on this?

Thanks for any additional thoughts,
Pat

Pat Flanakin on August 28th, 2007 at 10:03 am

^#4

I still find myself going to Bridge to pull together those sequences for panos, to create HDR images, etc. since I can’t figure out how to do that easily from LR (can it be done from LR?).

Mike Early on August 28th, 2007 at 10:10 am

^#5

Scott, I still find myself using Bridge when I want to create a Pano from a sequence of images — or an HDR image — is there a way to do this from LR?

Mike Early on August 28th, 2007 at 10:11 am

^#6

Mike Early - Have you considered making a custom preset to export your images right into Photomatix Pro or Photoshop for HDR?

Scott - Thank you so much for finally saying you hardly use Bridge as well! I’m a huge fan of all things NAPP…and no matter how many books I buy…how many hours of training I do on Lynda.com….everyone wants to start with a few chapters on Bridge. I wish someone would film your Lightroom Live seminar….I’d snatch that up in a second.

Peter James Zielinski on August 28th, 2007 at 10:39 am

^#7

Hey Scott, thanks for the post! I was actually confused when I read your cs3 book for digital photographers because you shared your workflow there and you were using Bridge but from your blogs and from your Lightroom book, you said most of your workflow is in Lightroom. I did adopt your workflow (in LR) so thanks a lot for that tip!

Too bad, I’m not in Chicago for your LR tour. Maybe I can catch it next time.

- Mike

Mike Lao on August 28th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

^#8

Hey Scott,

Thanks for the detailed answer on your workflow…quite thorough, and pretty much in keeping with what my guess was. As one who is working in many capacities (photographer, web designer, and graphics), I do find myself bouncing back and forth a lot depending on need. I do agree with what you’re saying though on the place for Lightroom in the workflow - from a photography standpoint, it certainly does make things easier. I also think for default template web publishing it has its perks over CS2 (not had the $$$ to cough up for CS3 yet). I still have no idea how you stay on top of all the latest developments in the industry, and find the time to shoot, and find the time to teach, and find the time to attend Photoshop World, and find the time to…well, let’s just say I am wondering where you find all the energy and time. I would imagine your days are long and nights are short…

Anyway, thanks again for the info. Making a go myself at things with a rudimentary blog of sorts. Feel free to stop in and critique/comment as your feedback (or anyone’s for that matter) would be most welcome. It’s at www.canonblogger.com (I know….not the Nikonian you are…oh well! )

Jason on August 28th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

^#9

Scott,

Thanks for the details about your workflow. I like the idea of using LR for adjustments but am having some difficulty as follows.

I currently use Lightroom 1.1 and CS2. I need to supply images to a library in RGB mode which I understand Lightroom doesn’t use. The problem I am finding is that when I make adjustmenst in LR and get the histogram without any white or black clipping and then go into Photoshop CS2 - there is still some clipping evident in the images.

I think this is due to the fact that the RGB 1998 colour space has less latitude than the LR RGB mode.

So at the moment, my workflow is rather longer than I want it to be. Is there any way I can get around this? I would love to just work in LR alone were it possible.

Thanks
Dave

Dave on August 31st, 2007 at 4:26 am

^#10

In addition to questions about whether Lightroom users need Photoshop, there’s the question of whether PS Elements is “good enough.” You can’t answer that question, since everyone’s needs are different, but I bet you can identify a half dozen realistic situations where you need one over the other, and readers can figure out if those situations apply to them. Put it together with some examples, and I bet it’ll be one of the more popular entries here (especially since Adobe is currently offering special pricing on CS3 to PSE users, so it’ll be a popular question for the next two weeks, which is when the deal runs out).

Thanks!

Kevin

Kevin on August 31st, 2007 at 4:09 pm

^#11

I read one of your posts where a reader asked about your workflow and you said 70% was now in Lightroom. I have PSE5 and have used your great book to finally get pretty handy in PSE. I also have several thousand images cataloged in PSE now. I really like the Organizer and could not imagine much better for what I do. But I am captivated by the new Lightroom interface. I have been reading the Adobe forums and see there is a way to import PSE catalogs into Lightroom. But are they similar in organization? And Adobe seems to have three different cataloging technologies right now (PSE, Bridge, Lightroom) - so which way are they headed and how do I preserve my current investment in tagging? Thanks for any direction/insight you might be able to post.

-Ed

Ed W on September 4th, 2007 at 1:47 pm

^#12

Hi Scott,

Just a suggestion - a combined Lightroom/CS3 (Adobe for Digital Photographers maybe?) book would be great. I see multiple techniques for things like B&W conversion between the two products, and would be interested in your comparison between all the techniques in both products.

I use lightroom for developing my raw files, then always export to TIFF in photoshop for things like sharpening and (especially) noise reduction. I also use the PS photofilters rather than LR. But then my workflow evolved during the LR beta, so I may be moving to PS for things I don’t need to.

Any possibility of a combined book or ebook?

Doug on September 13th, 2007 at 3:15 pm