Hardware and Software Advice

[NoIdea]

Hi all,

I have a few questions and apologise if these are covered somewhere else in the forum. I want to begin photo editing and have been told LR is the way to go. However, I'm on a tight budget and will look to purchase LR 5 rather than the latest version. One of the things that has caught my attention whilst watching some instructional videos on macro photography is focus stacking. I gather that LR can call on Photoshop to do this but cannot do it within LR itself. I don't know if it's the full version of Photoshop that's needed or Elements so hoping someone can clarify this for me. If it's Elements can anyone tell me in which version this functionality exists as, again, I don't want to have to purchase the latest version.

I'm also in need of a suitable laptop to install this software on and could do with some advice on an appropriate model to look for. This is purely hobby stuff and not commercial so it doesn't have to be super fast with ridiculous amounts of memory, just something adequate enough to do the job without issues.

Thanks in advance.

 

[gedstar]

Hi and welcome to PSG

I don't use either LR or PSE but apparently you can do focus stacking in PSE
More info
http://www.deadhorsecreek.com/wcc/focus_stacking.pdf

As for the Laptop, here's the system requirements for PSE
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/system-requirements.html

You can also add more features to PSE with ElementsXXL
More info
http://www.graphics.com/article/elementsxxl-enhanced-extend-adobe-photoshop-elements

 

[NoIdea]

Thanks for such a quick reply. I'll look into those before parting with any cash.

 

[Tom Mann]

Just so you know, LR5 was dreadfully slow, even on a fast machine. It was also a memory hog, crashing more frequently than I liked. I grew a head full of gray hairs waiting for it to do its thing, LOL.

In subsequent versions, Adobe made significant improvements in speed, memory handling, etc. If there is any way possible for you to get a more recent version, I would strongly urge you to do so. For example, their Photography plan is $10/month for the newest versions of both LR and PS:
https://creative.adobe.com/plans (FWIW, I think there is a special, "Black Monday" promotion going on right now.)

Old timers, like myself, poo-poo'ed Adobe's new payment and software distribution model (ie, the "Creative Cloud") when it first came out. The argument one used to hear from the old-timers was that with the Creative Cloud business model, you never owned the software. Well, in fact, you never owned any of their software, even before the CC business model.

The fine print *always* said that their software was only licensed to you, never sold to the end user. Now, many, if not most of the people that I know prefer it for reasons that we can go into, should you like. $10/month is a couple of coffees at Starbucks. I urge you to consider it.

Cheers,

Tom M

PS - As almost everyone on this forum know, I have absolutely no business or other relationship with Adobe - I just use their stuff, LOL.

 

[NoIdea]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your advice. I don't think I can justify commitment to the CC as I tend to dip in and out of taking pictures so would rather just make the one payment and have the software available when I want it.

 

[Tom Mann]

I understand, but let me suggest another possibility: If you don't have tens of thousands of images that require the DAM (digital asset management) aspects of LR (ie, the cataloging and retrieval of lots of images), just get an older version of Photoshop itself. IMHO, it's the cataloging module in old versions of LR that's the real killer.

Versions of Photoshop from the same time period (say, around 2012-2014) come with almost exactly the same version of ACR as the "develop module" in corresponding versions of LR. The only differences are convenience improvements in the user interface. However, corresponding PS versions give you much more advanced editing features than LR and were all pretty much rock solid.

Just a thought.

Cheers,

Tom M

 

[NoIdea]

Thanks Tom, food for thought.