Newb Software Question

Folks, I have an ancient copy of Photoshop (CS2) that I have to run inside a virtualized XP machine on my Windows 7 computer to actually use. However, for my purposes (work-related not personal) it has served well and does more than what I actually need.

I saw Bryan's news article about Lightroom and have to admit that I have no idea what that software does vs. PS. The Wikipedia article seems to suggest that it works in conjunction with PS but Adobe's site suggests it's a standalone application. Though I've never made a dime from photography, I did spend a large amount of time in a darkroom when I was younger so I have a basic grasp of the workflow required to develop film and make prints. For all those youngin's out there that's what we used to call a printer. It had wonderful-smelling chemicals like fixer and neat tools called enlargers.

Can anyone enlighten me please?

Lightroom is best used as a batch editing and organizational program. You can make adjustments to an image and apply those same adjustments across a range of images. It's much like Canon's free Digital Photo Professional, except it's much more full-featured. I've used Lightroom from time to time, but DPP is what I use most often.

Thanks Sean. I can also batch process in PS. Are they the same sorts of things or different? Obviously my ancient copy of PS doesn't support my camera's raw files but DPP can create 16-bit TIFF files that have the full info. It's slow but I'm not a professional.

If I were you, I would be asking if I could import files from Lightroom in to CS2. Maybe you can but it seems that software companies (which Adobe is one) like to make software that creates new files that it's old cousins (likeCS2) can’t use.

I have no idea if it will or will not, but I would ask the question.

Eh, not too worried about it but thanks. I don't see myself using Lightroom. I only work on one or two photos at a time - unless I'm working on thousands (work) in which case I write my own scripts in MATLAB. But I do appreciate the knowledge.

If you try luminous landscape forum, they eulogize about doing everything in Lightroom. LR 4 will have Softproofing as well, so in their eyes no need at all to use PS.

I have both Lightroom and Photoshop, and I use Lightroom for about 98% of my editing, sending an image to Photoshop only if I need to do exposure blending, pixel-level editing or certain effects like Gaussian Blur. For distortion correction, exposure tweaks, curves, color, cropping, [cloning, which I never do], and pretty much everything else, Lightroom gives the same results a whole lot faster. What it comes down to is that Lightroom has pretty much all the tools needed for photos without any of the other features that Photoshop needs to include for other types of users. The lens profile distortion and vignetting corrections alone are a good enough reason for me to use Lightroom as the first step in my workflow.

Right now the Lightroom 4 Beta is free and I highly recommend giving it a try while that's still the case!

P.S. Lightroom is a standalone application with decent, but not excellent, hooks into Photoshop. For example, you can select a group of images in Lightroom and have it open them as layers in a new Photoshop file, or use Photoshop's HDR tool to merge them. But for the most part, they work independently.

LR is basically Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw combined. Photoshop is a complement to Lightroom, but not necessarily a replacement. It's more of a replacement to Bridge only it doesn't have to load up a bunch of crap for all the other Adobe products that photographers don't want (Illustrator, Dreamweaver, ect). With LR3 going for $70 today, I'd buy a copy if you even thought about using it.

Have LR3 and PS 5.5 . Lightroom can do most of my image editing, the interface is a restylized version of Adobe Camera Raw. When it comes to printing, I prefer PS as my printer has a plug-in and the softproofing helps me to avoid out-of-gamut surprises. Overall, I use LR3 far more than DPP or PS5. It has extended capabilities compared to DPP, but I do use the 'Edit in PS' feature for perspective corrections (keystoning), better selection of sharpening methods for highly pushed images, and printing. DPP gets more usage at work where I tend to use a tethered camera a lot for macro shots before and after testing material samples. At the end of the day, if I could only keep one of the three at home it would be LR3. The library function and the developing interface make it more user-friendly than PS could ever be, though I would on occasion miss the larger feature set of PS.

Given that you are scripting in Matlab, presumably using toolbox functions, you may find that the ability to create scripts in PS5.5 for automating repetitive processing tasks is to your liking. Don't suppose your workplace could use the upgrade for image processing before data analysis and would allow you use of the license for when you work at home? I know you work in a lab environment. If it is part of an educational institution be aware that there are academic discounts from Adobe for students, staff and faculty to purchase for personal usage.

Have LR3 and PS 5.5 . Lightroom can do most of my image editing, the interface is a restylized version of Adobe Camera Raw. When it comes to printing, I prefer PS as my printer has a plug-in and the softproofing helps me to avoid out-of-gamut surprises. Overall, I use LR3 far more than DPP or PS5. It has extended capabilities compared to DPP, but I do use the 'Edit in PS' feature for perspective corrections (keystoning), better selection of sharpening methods for highly pushed images, and printing. DPP gets more usage at work where I tend to use a tethered camera a lot for macro shots before and after testing material samples. At the end of the day, if I could only keep one of the three at home it would be LR3. The library function and the developing interface make it more user-friendly than PS could ever be, though I would on occasion miss the larger feature set of PS.

Given that you are scripting in Matlab, presumably using toolbox functions, you may find that the ability to create scripts in PS5.5 for automating repetitive processing tasks is to your liking. Don't suppose your workplace could use the upgrade for image processing before data analysis and would allow you use of the license for when you work at home? I know you work in a lab environment. If it is part of an educational institution be aware that there are academic discounts from Adobe for students, staff and faculty to purchase for personal usage.

I sorta work in a lab. The home office in CA has a solid lab but most of the time I work out of my house (in FL). I've built up a "lab" in one port of my garage. How many people have an optics table in their garage? :)

We used to have a license to the MATLAB image processing toolbox but I didn't keep it. I had to modify so many of the scripts and understand what they were doing that it was just faster to write my own. That's the problem I've always had with PS. Yes, there are some powerful tools but the math behind them isn't always exposed - not to mention anything that requires mouse input. I'm not an artist! Thanks for the input though. It's always good to have a better understanding of the tools available as one never knows when the need for them may arise.

At least FL is more seismically stable than CA. Would not envy the person who needs to re-align everything due to a tremor.

Sounds like you are quite capable of programming. Have you considered using some of the existing image processing libraries and building your own wrapper? At least you'd know how the functions work...

Oh, I use public libraries often enough. I just didn't find the upkeep on the MATLAB one to be worth the money (whereas the basic MATLAB maintenance fee gets paid on time!). We generally do ... odd stuff so there aren't libraries generally for what I need. That's ok. That gives me something to do all day when I'm not reading this site!

As far as realignment goes we tend to deliver instruments that can bolt onto a truck, airplane, or helicopter. A little earthquake wouldn't bother them. Things like holography would drive me nuts. I hate precision alignment. We tend to use FedEx and UPS as our vibration testers. If the instrument can ship from CA to me and back again still working it's ready for just about anything!

An alternative to MatLab is SciLab which is opensource. Have been using it for crunching through data analysis for some time. Has ability to import MatLab scripts and files. Functionally, it is similar to MatLab, but i believe it has a larger function library. With the large number of people contributing to the toolboxes there is a broad range of interesting applications covered (neural networks, vision systems, robotics, etc).

If you need more rigorous vibration testing I believe the Civil Engineering Dept is planning to start doing seismic testing once they figure out how to achieve full isolation of the shaker pad from the rest of the building. Cracking buildings is best confined to the experimental structures.