Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Alan Goldhammer on July 11, 2012, 02:03:17 pm
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With the advances in LR, I find that I really need Photoshop less as time goes by (and certainly the addition of soft proofing to LR4 helps big time). However there are some issues such as straightening verticals and cleaning up "debris" from images that can only be done in Photoshop. I've upgraded the last two go arounds and now have CS5 and my question is whether I really need to spend a fresh $200 for an upgrade (CS6) the I might not need because there is little incremental value. I know that when they do these paired upgrades that the ACR engines synch only between the new versions (and maybe that is the hook Adobe uses to force an upgrade). Is it an issue if I don't upgrade and if there is one, what would the correct work around be?
Thanks in advance.
Alan
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I have the same dilema, Alan. In my case, I own a ton of third party plug-ins, most of which I paid for and down loaded, with no disks. ARRGHHH! finding all those pass words and re-downloading!
Good luck
Dave
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Consider Photoshop Elements.
Layer masks, stitching, auto-blend layers, the cloning tools and Content-Aware Fill are all there.
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Consider Photoshop Elements.
Layer masks, stitching, auto-blend layers, the cloning tools and Content-Aware Fill are all there.
It might be worth waiting for the new version of elements, it might not be far away.
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... However there are some issues such as straightening verticals and cleaning up "debris" from images that can only be done in Photoshop. ...
The new Photoshop CS6 has a plug-in for straightening verticals. It's just unbelievable. If you're PC based, it also makes use of the GPU for certain effects.
However, why don't you download a trial version and see if it's worth it?
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Consider Photoshop Elements.
Layer masks, stitching, auto-blend layers, the cloning tools and Content-Aware Fill are all there.
I already have all these in CS5.
EDIT- I also believe that Elements is an 8 bit program while PS is 16 (at least PSE was when I started off with it 4 years ago).
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I'd upgrade for the future, but keep CS5 on your machine - there are some serious and not-so-serious bugs with the new version that need ironing out - for example, the crop and rotate function is causing weird artifacts as discussed in this thread. (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum) This makes it basically broken for me.
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Photoshop CS6 seems to run faster for me that CS5, which was not the case with the early versions of Lightroom 3, and Lightroom 4 is still acting somewhat laggy. ACR 7 works very smoothly for me with no lag to the controls. I don't know why this should be the case when Lightroom 4 is based upon ACR 7. I really like the updated interface in PS CS6 as well. Really haven't begun to explore the new features yet, except for content aware patch, which seems pretty nice.
Also, if you do video, or plan to, the ability to run video through CS6 and use it to correct lens distortion, vignetting and CA seems awesome.
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..... there are some issues such as straightening verticals ......that can only be done in Photoshop.
Camera Raw has a feature in the lens correction section which can be used for straightening verticals. This can be done in CS5, CS6 and Lightroom 4 and maybe some other versions as well. Whether it has the depth of functionality you need is another question but basic straightening can be done.
Some information available here: http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/using/correct-lens-distortions-camera-raw.html#correct_image_perspective_and_lens_flaws_manually
I've found that it works quite well provided you switch the screen grid on to give guidance - an easy way is by pressing the V key. It's good enough that on most images where correction is needed I can use ACR rather than the PTLens plugin.
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@Kim - it works but not as well as the warp tool in PS if you have really bad verticals. Anyway, it's all moot as I upgraded last week.
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It might be worth waiting for the new version of elements, it might not be far away.
Consider Photoshop Elements.
Guys, the OP has CS5, the question is, should the OP upgrade to CS6.
Alan, this is a good question many others are asking. First, do you think you’ll use raws as Smart Objects or have to access ACR? If not, if all you need Photoshop for is working on rendered images, then the question is, what is new in CS6 that would help you that isn’t in CS5? Other than some advancements in Content Aware features, I’m not sure what you’d find useful. But you might want to download the 30 day demo of CS6. I’ll bet in a few hours you’ll have your answer.
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I’ll bet in a few hours you’ll have your answer.
Looks like we posted at about the same time. I did upgrade and agree with you that the new content aware features are well worth it. I've already used it to correct a couple of images from my recent Italy trip. It's also going to help in terms of going back to some images that I captured several years ago and had problems with with because of the lack of these tools.
Alan
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Of course I will be upgrading to CS6 as soon as returning to my home computer next month. I need to order the update directly from Adobe on disk because the upgrade won't be available at my Apple store and my internet connection isn't fast enough to download the application. I've been upgrading each time and have never regretted it.
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As the one who started the thread and has upgraded, I think it's time to close this discussion down.