photoshop or lightroom?

judkinsjenny

I would LOVE to have photoshop for Christmas. I have a friend who suggested lightroom. i looked up the LR vs. PS and the only thing im worried about is LR i dont think can merge a photo of Johnathan (my son that died) and the rest of our family so i can have pics of all of us together. does anyone have either one of these? what is your opinion? also, what version? im looking up on the internet and im like huh? i just need something basic yet functional for home use and not over 100$ or so

tonlynn

I have never used lightroom, but I have photoshop elements and can merge photos. I hope this helps!

fastbelly

2 completely different softwares. Lightroom is geared towards digital negative (RAW) conversion and development and library organization and Photoshop is geared towards photo editing.
You have 2 versions of Photoshop though, the creative suite and a smaller cheaper version Elements.

Suedre

I have photoshop, painter, and LR. They are all very different and accompolish different tasks.If you don't want a lot of high end features and want to basically merge photos, try avairy. It's a free online tool:

http://www.aviary.com/

Suedre

You can also try GIMP. It's a free open source tool similar to photoshop:

http://www.gimp.org/

lockef

2 completely different softwares. Lightroom is geared towards digital negative (RAW) conversion and development and library organization and Photoshop is geared towards photo editing.
You have 2 versions of Photoshop though, the creative suite and a smaller cheaper version Elements.

QFT

If you're post processing large batches of RAW files, get lightroom. If you want to start doing creative stuff with jpegs/bmps, start with Photoshop Elements until you get the hang of things. You'll be overwhelmed with Photoshop CS if you've never used Photoshop before.

mikethom

Go for Photoshop Elements, it combines the organizational features of Lightroom and many of the editing features of the full Photoshop, about the only thing I wish I could do in Elements, that I can't, is to script activities. Unless you are a student or an educator the full version of Photoshop and Lightroom is very expensive. You should be able to get Photoshop Elements for less than $100.

judkinsjenny

Sweet, thank you so much!

auntdeedee87

Elements.