# Lightroom Vs Elements



## RussRoc (Jun 10, 2013)

I have been using Photoshop Elements for years. I pretty much only soot in Canon Raw.

My Question is: Does Lightroom get me something that Elements doesn't? If so what?


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## Drizzt321 (Jun 10, 2013)

RussRoc said:


> I have been using Photoshop Elements for years. I pretty much only soot in Canon Raw.
> 
> My Question is: Does Lightroom get me something that Elements doesn't? If so what?



Lightroom is combination of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) which helps you sort, organize, search, and manage images and more recently video. It also provides a high quality global and localized editing for photos, although it doesn't really give you the pixel level editing capabilities that Photoshop or Elements gives you. Or all the layers, or things like that. From what I've found, it's a great photographers tool to organize and manage as well as majority of editing, but then export to Photoshop (or Elements) when you need things that involve layers, blurs, HDR merge, photo stitching, or other pixel level operations.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Jun 10, 2013)

You can try lightroom and see how it works for you. Each has its advantages. 

LR is a professional photography tool designed for photographers, it has image management tools as well as editing tools. Elements is a light version of photoshop, and is pretty capable at simple editing tasks, it tends to have less control over edits and is easier to use. 

Like any professional tool, Lightroom offers more user control over edits as well as more editing capability. It also means more skill is required, and to benefit, you need to learn how to use it, you will be frustrated and miss out on 90% of the advanced features when just plunging in and expecting to learn by trial and error.

If you do not have 10's of thousands of images to manage, elements might work well for you.

I haven't used elements since Lightroom 2 came out, so I do not have actual user experience to compare the current versions of the two.


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## bitm2007 (Jun 10, 2013)

Yes. The full version of Adobe's Raw Converter (ARC) for starters. Once you've used it you will wonder how you worked without it in the past. Try downloading the Lightroom 5 trial and you will soon see the benefits. A link is below

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom


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## TeenTog (Jun 12, 2013)

I use both Lightroom and Elements, and I think that each has it's own specific purpose. Lightroom is an amazing organizer, and makes it really easy and straightforward to access the photos I need when I need them. I do the vast majority of my editing in Lightroom, because I usually only make global adjustments. However, when the occasion arises, I need to jump to Elements when I need to edid very small parts of an image, or when I need to use multiple layers. I use it for more of the local adjustments. The both softwares nicely compement eachother, and I don't think that one replaces the other.


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