# Lightroom 5 versus Photoshop Elements 11



## ajperk (Aug 12, 2013)

Hello everyone!

I am interested in purchasing some photo editing software. Unfortunately, I'm not really aware of what the different options are best for. Right now, I am debating between Lightroom 5 and Photoshop Elements 11. I have been using the Canon Digital Photo Professional up to now just for tweaking and touching up colors and noise and what not, but I want to expand my ability to edit photos and more control over how they ultimately look. 

So, I was wondering which of these two would be more useful? Also, are there other software options that I am overlooking?

I'm sorry if similar threads have already been posted, I searched a bit but I didn't find anything quite like this.

Thanks!


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## Harry Muff (Aug 12, 2013)

Lightroom 5. Thank me later. 8)


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## Don Haines (Aug 12, 2013)

The free software included with your camera in better than photoshop elements. Lightroom 5 is much superior to either.

I had a copy of photoshop elements before I got Lightroom, I have not used it since.


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## TonyMM (Aug 12, 2013)

Hands down, first. choice is LR5. You may find needs/opportunities in some cases for using Layers in which case you can then consider PSE or OnOne Software's Perfect Photo Suite (one module of which is Perfect Layers with several other highly useful modules). I had PSE first, then got LR5 and find most of my post processing needs (95+%) are met with LR. I now use PPS for all the balance and don't go to PSE anymore. 

Tony M


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## Harry Muff (Aug 12, 2013)

I've been using Photoshop since CS2, so around 8 years, tried using Elements a couple of times out of curiosity and really struggled. Just couldn't find my way round it.


I mean, isn't it supposed to be easier?


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## TonyMM (Aug 12, 2013)

Harry: that's exactly why I bought LR 4 and upgraded to LR5 when it came out. I could not easily/naturally find a good workflow with PSE and LR was inherently easier to work through - the ""top to bottom" normal workflow just plain works for me!

Tony M


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## Janbo Makimbo (Aug 12, 2013)

If you are interested in photo editing then I suggest you take a look at PSE 11, I have this and LR5 as I got it free with my 6D. A lot of 'Pros' use LR but I suppose its down to what you want to do in editing.

Here is a balanced comparison


http://photographylife.com/lightroom-vs-photoshop-elements


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## Halfrack (Aug 12, 2013)

The tools are different, but related. Lightroom will do a lot of what you will need, but some times you need Photoshop, and Elements can be purchased where as the full size product is subscription only.

Both have free trials, download them and give them a go.


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## MrFotoFool (Aug 12, 2013)

I use Photoshop Elements 9 and love it. I have not personally found a need to use the full CS version of Photoshop (pricey), because Elements does everything I would need to do. I have not used Lightroom but I generally do not shoot RAW. You can do RAW conversion in Elements, but for large groups of photos it would be rather time consuming.

My understanding is that Lightroom is for sorting and standard edits (color balance, noise reduction, etc) of large batches of photos and Photoshop (Elements or CS) is for more advanced edits, such as replacing backgrounds, doing composites (including panoramas), adding text, etc.

You may find a need for both or you may find Lightroom is enough (as others have said). If you are in the very tiny minority of serious photographers like myself that shoots camera JPEG, then you may find like me that Elements is sufficient.


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## MichaelHodges (Aug 12, 2013)

I use LR 3.6 and Photoshop Elements 5. I use LR for most of the processing, and PS for stuff like clone stamp.


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## risc32 (Aug 12, 2013)

I use PSE for cloning, panos, dust removal and a couple other little things, and DXO for everything else. I shoot RAW. a friend of mine is always pushing me to get lightroom but i can do everything i've ever dreamed of doing to a photo, so i just don't see the need. he like sorting files by camera and focal length and if your into that sort of weird stuff i hear LR is just the ticket.


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## kjay27 (Aug 12, 2013)

I have not worked with LR, so I can't give a comparison, but have used PSE for some time and find it has a lot of capabilities. If your decision is indeed PSE, I'd recommend waiting until Sept/Oct when PSE 12 will be available. Also, PSE does have a fairly steep learning curve, and I was frustrated with it early on. However, I found a couple of absolutely fantastic online courses from ED2GO for the various versions of PSE 9, 10, 11, etc. "Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer, parts I and II." They use a step by step approach and provide the photos used in the lessons. What I've found most useful is that you can print the various lessons, and you'll have them as a reference book. (They also have courses on regular Photoshop, and perhaps LR, but not sure about that.)


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## swampler (Aug 12, 2013)

I do 99% of my editing in LR5. If I need advanced cloning/healing, layers, background replacement, etc, then i would use PSE, but that just isn't needed daily.


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## darrellrhodesmiller (Aug 12, 2013)

i would start with lightroom.. its an amazing piece of software thats VERY powerful.. but all the power isnt apparent at first glance. (all adobe products seem to be that way) it'll take some time and patience to learn. Lightroom 5 has really improved on a lot. i've been a photoshop user since version 3.0.. i still use photoshop quite a bit.. but with each new release of lightroom, i find i have to use photoshop less and less. Unless you really want to get very artsy.. or really get into deep editing.. Lightroom will do all you need. my suggestion is to buy lightroom for 100.00 or whatever its on sale for now.. and spend 20.00 for a lynda.com subscription.. and go through their Lightroom 5 essentials class. in about 4 hours (its broken into 5-10min lessons) you'll learn everything you need to know about lightroom. its worth the time and money. 

photoshop elements is great. it has a few advantages over lightroom but unless you plan to really get deep into editing.. you wont need them. Photoshop has a far better healing brush and stamp tool than lightroom. these tools are used to hide blemishes.. and remove things from images.. like wires and telephone polls.. there are other things.. but i'd start with lightroom.. once you full learn lightroom and feel like yu've really hit a wall.. and you want to do things you just cant do in lightroom.. then look into photoshop elements or something else.


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## mdmphoto (Aug 12, 2013)

LR5 is dramatically superior to PSE for editing photos. While I do have CS5, I fiind that over 90% of my work is in LR; I rarely, rarely bother with ps nowadays, for near- 2 years. I also use onOne Perfect Photo Suite 7, and am toying with the idea of adding Nik complete to my workflow, but the overwhelming majority of my work is completed in LR5. It's also easy to synchronize global edits, i.e. WB, color, and tonal changes, across large numbers of photos in LR .
Additionally, the image-management tools in LR are unparalleled for organizing and keeping track of large numbers of files.


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## Janbo Makimbo (Aug 12, 2013)

Lightroom 5 is not dramatically superior to Photoshop Elements 11 for editing pictures.... To say so is nonsence!!

Thought I would insert a random image like the previous post.....this one used no LR or PSE editing...


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## bycostello (Aug 12, 2013)

they are very different programs, LR allows organising of your files and edits non distructivly.... LR5 is what you want probably....


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## wsheldon (Aug 12, 2013)

swampler said:


> I do 99% of my editing in LR5. If I need advanced cloning/healing, layers, background replacement, etc, then i would use PSE, but that just isn't needed daily.



+1 

Now with LR5 I expect to take even fewer trips to PSE. That said, the two programs do pair nicely when you do need a pixel editor to really do heavy editing on a photo. Just right click, select "Edit In", then choose "Edit in Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor". A dialog then lets you choose various options for creating a file to edit. The resulting file is then managed in LR side-by-side with the raw image when you save and return from PS/PSE, and you can keyword, export and print right from LR without going back to PS/PSE.

PSE does include cataloging and other overlapping features, but the editor is just a slightly cut down version of PS optimized for photography. For $70 it's a good add-on IMO.


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## zim (Aug 12, 2013)

So no issues with editing in 8bit then?
I don't but I thought that was the main reason PSE was disliked


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## Jim K (Aug 12, 2013)

Since the OP does not have either Lr or PSE I would start by getting the new Lightroom 5 and then if you find that the additional editing ability of PSE is needed get PSE 12 as it should be out by then. Most people find that Lr5 works for 95% of their images. 

I just took the Ed2go Lr 4 course (Lr5 was not released yet) and found it worth the money. It gave me a good overview of Lr. The instructor there thought that the Lr cataloging was better than PSE 11 cataloging and a better place to start as you could do corrections to groups of similar images and then "fine tune" the ones that needed it.


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## beckstoy (Aug 12, 2013)

Lightroom 5. All day. It's simple and extremely powerful.


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## pedro (Aug 12, 2013)

Harry Muff said:


> I've been using Photoshop since CS2, so around 8 years, tried using Elements a couple of times out of curiosity and really struggled. Just couldn't find my way round it.
> 
> 
> I mean, isn't it supposed to be easier?



@Harry Muff: *I am with CS 2 for about the same time. Can you still run it on let's say windows 7 or 8?* Going LR next year with a new Notebook.


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## mdmphoto (Aug 12, 2013)

Janbo Makimbo said:


> Lightroom 5 is not dramatically superior to Photoshop Elements 11 for editing pictures.... To say so is nonsence!!
> 
> Thought I would insert a random image like the previous post.....this one used no LR or PSE editing...



*Nonsence?*
Let's try not to fail civility and maintain a focus on addressing the op's concerns. Good that you are emotionally candid, but LR5 is in fact too _DRAMATICALLY_ superior in its algorithms, organizational capacities, and simple accessibility of the tools it offers. LR5 can also be expected to retain its utility longer into the future. Why bother with pse if one will simply end up moving up to LR5 anyway? Disclaimer: I've not used pse for several years as I found its features either not robust enough, or too inconvenient to use as a standalone. The OP can also download LR5 and use t free for 30 days to get a feel for it. I'm not so sure if the same is true for pse. Might you offer an image that you've edited with either LR or PSE?


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## bholliman (Aug 12, 2013)

wsheldon said:


> swampler said:
> 
> 
> > I do 99% of my editing in LR5. If I need advanced cloning/healing, layers, background replacement, etc, then i would use PSE, but that just isn't needed daily.
> ...



Agreed!

I use both programs frequently, but LR5 for almost every picture and PSE11 for just a few. PSE11 is handy for some types of editing that LR doesn't handle.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 12, 2013)

Photoshop Elements is a photo editor, while Lightroom is both a editor and a database so you can organize and locate hundreds of thousands of images. Its specifically designed for photography, but not for everyone.

I'd recommend Elements for those who do not have many thousands of images, and manage them and their organization manually. Nothing wrong with that.

At some point, if you start getting thousands of images and find you need a better way to find one, then a image manager is needed. You can get dedicated software, or all in one software like Lightroom. Even the full version of Photoshop needs a separate image management tool.

Lightroom is not initiative, you need training to understand the image management and the database. There is a lot of free training that helps.


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## emag (Aug 12, 2013)

Pedro -

I use CS2 on Windows 7x64. I've gradually moved to LR for most of my editing, but sometimes call up CS2 from LR for a photo or two. 



pedro said:


> @Harry Muff: *I am with CS 2 for about the same time. Can you still run it on let's say windows 7 or 8?* Going LR next year with a new Notebook.


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## gary (Aug 12, 2013)

I have both LR4 and PS5, sorry not Elements. I almost exclusively use LR4 as it has many of the functions that I need. I started with LR and would advise this is a good place to start as its functions are very straight forward and the library database is very useful and its easier to start with a database than to suddenly look and see that you have 40,000 images that you then wish to put into one. Also $79 for an upgrade is not too bad if like me you skip an upgrade. If you took this route take a look at some of the plug-ins that are available which can be really useful.


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## papa-razzi (Aug 12, 2013)

Ultimately as your photography and editing progress, you will end up with both Lightroom and either PSE or Photoshop. Most professionals use both Lightroom and Photoshop. 

Therefore, the question is where is the best place to start - PSE or Lightroom? Unfortunately, there is no correct answer - hense the various suggestions to your post. I now have lightroom and PSE 11, but started with PSE 8 only.

Why start with PSE: PSE is two programs, the Organizer and the Editor. The organizer is a database/catalog for your photos. It allows you to tag photos with locations, events, etc. It has face recognition, geo tagging, and some other nice things such as sorting your photos by calendar, photo shoot, etc. It is a fairly powerful program. There are some very basic editing capabilities that are part of the organizer as well. The Editor is a stripped down version of Photoshop, with a modified UI. For most non-professionals, the PSE Editor is all you would want, and at this point I don't ever see myself progressing beyond PSE and needing the full version of Photoshop. I have been able to take cars, billboards and electric poles out of a landscape photo. I have also swapped heads from a few photos in a large group photo to get everyone smiling. Many of the plug-ins/add-ons that are available for Photoshop are also available for PSE. You could get PSE and be very happy with it for quite some time, and for some folks that is all they ever need. 

So, why bother with Lightroom? I found a few downsides to PSE - primarily in the Organizer. The organizer is very much a consumer level product and doesn't scale for an enthusiast or professional. The biggest problem for me was performance. The PSE organizer is not 64-bit or multithreaded (at least that is what I found with version 8). I have a large number of photos, and when I tried to really use all the features (face recognition, multiple tags, etc.) it was just way too slow and basically unusable. I read about others with large databases that were fine, and the newer version might be better. Performance was the main reason I went to Lightroom. One other big difference is The PSE Editor is not designed to work well with multiple files at once - for example, changing the white balance on all the photos from a photo shoot. Lightroom is designed to be the heart of a photographer's digital work flow. It can be customized heavily, and you can process a lot of photos more efficiently - from importing photos to printing or posting. Lightroom feels very integrated. Everything flows well. PSE feels a bit cobbled together - especially between the organizer and the editor.

Starting with Lightroom: If I were to do it over again, I would have started out with Lightroom. I outgrew the organizer quite quickly. Lighroom does it all, except for the occasional need to make extensive edits to a photo - at which point, you can launch an external editor from within lightroom (i.e. PSE Editor) and do what you need. I very rarely need to use PSE. You will never grow out of Lightroom. There is nothing in the PSE Organizer that I miss, and I knew the PSE Organizer quite well. Lightroom can import a PSE Organizer catalog, so upgrading from PSE to Lightroom is fairly painless.

So, bottom line - it is up to you where the best place to start is. If you ultimately outgrow the PSE Organizer, moving to Lightroom is fairly straightforward. If you outgrow the PSE Editor, then you need the full Photoshop.


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## ajperk (Aug 13, 2013)

Thank you all very much for your replies. I think I am going to try a free trial of Lightroom 5 (along with some instruction via youtube or another website, such as some of those suggested above). I have discovered that my wife has a copy of Photoshop Elements 6.0 that she has acquired through her work, so I can play with that a bit also. How different is Photoshop Elements 11.0 versus 6.0?


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## sjprg (Aug 13, 2013)

My take is that if you file using windows explorer correctly a database is superfluous. That said disregard the organizer in PSE11 and just use the editor which appears to be a subset of PS disabled to 8 bits which makes it useful only for JPGs. It will convert raw to 8 bit jpg though which throws away most of the information in your image. The Content Aware Brush is the same as the one in PS also disabled to 8 bits forcing you to jpg also.

For those whom like databases LR5 is a vast improvement over previous versions. I've never found a real use for the database over my yy/mm/dd/name, file system on a large drive. My major compliant with LR5 is the "Dust Brush" which is just that, and is useless for any other corrections. You must exit to PS to do any real content corrections or to PSE11 if using JPGs.

I guess the group that developed LR doesn't talk to the PS developers or they are hard headed about fixing the dust brush. NO Madman Chan the dust brush DOES NOT WORK!


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## sjprg (Aug 13, 2013)

"How different is Photoshop Elements 11.0 versus 6.0?"


Day and Night. Don't bother, download the 30 day trial.


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## pedro (Aug 13, 2013)

emag said:


> Pedro -
> 
> I use CS2 on Windows 7x64. I've gradually moved to LR for most of my editing, but sometimes call up CS2 from LR for a photo or two.
> 
> ...



*@emag:* Thanks a lot! That's great news. I will do so as well, then. Looking forward to play with it next year. Still saving up for the notebook by now. Regards, Pedro


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## Jim K (Aug 13, 2013)

ajperk said:


> Thank you all very much for your replies. I think I am going to try a free trial of Lightroom 5 (along with some instruction via youtube or another website, such as some of those suggested above).



@ajperk - While you are looking on youtube, find the Tim Grey talk he did at B&H titled "Getting Started with Lightroom 5." It's an hour 55 minutes long and he goes into setting up your folders & files to make Lr's filing system very easy to use. Worth watching.


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## schill (Aug 13, 2013)

I have LR4 and PSE11. I use both, but not very extensively. I have several other programs I use as well and often use DPP for basic tweaking and conversion.

I will probably upgrade to LR5, but I haven't decided yet.

You definitely want to download trials of the latest versions. I would not look at PSE6 or 8 expecting to get a very good feel about 11.

A problem I have had with different versions of these programs is the way they want to handle image management. I do not want either LR or PSE to keep track of my images. I use other programs for that. PSE keeps the organizer and editor separate. I never use the organizer and go straight to the editor. I would not use earlier versions of PSE because Adobe forced the installation of their download program on you. I did not want it to pop up everytime I connected a card reader to the computer (you could get rid of it, but it wasn't always straightforward).

The main problem I have with LR, and it's not really that big, is that it wants you to import pictures into its database before you can edit them. I don't like needing to do this - it just feels awkward (for me). Most people seem to be happy with the process.

In the end, the best thing to do is try the different programs. Most have free trials available. I bounce back and forth between different programs (PSE, LR, DXO, DPP, PictureWindow, etc.) and I probably should spend more time working with them and just pick one and stick with it.

[Edit: I removed a really mangled discussion of monitor calibration and profile management here.]

By the way, I don't use any of these programs to print. Printing is done through Qimage.


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## Old Sarge (Aug 13, 2013)

I downloaded the LR5 beta and didn't care for it. I'm old and set in my ways and have been using PSE since 3 or 4 (I think....it came free with my first DSLR, a Rebel) and have grown used to the Organizer. It seems to fit my way of organizing pictures (a little over 50k of them currently). I usually upgrade PSE every other upgrade (using 10, may buy 12 when it comes out). But as I shoot more RAW I was thinking LR might be better for me and since Adorama had it for $99.00 I was really considering the purchase but I see that they are out of stock now so I will have to reconsider it.


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## Mrklaw (Sep 1, 2013)

How about if I have lightroom 5 and PSE9? Are there significant improvements in 11 that make it worth buying? I think 9 has layer masks and content-aware full which are great, but what does 11 have new?


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