Thanks, David. I'll definitely start an expedition into Photoshop CS3 rather sooner than later.
I know Martin Evening's Photoshop books are pretty good. Any others you could recommend?
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I'm self-taught on Photoshop based on experience with other programs, online tutorials, forums and the commonality across the Creative Suite (there's a fair amount of commonality between Illustrator and Photoshop in the way that certain tools, key combinations and the like work).
If you liked Martin Evening's Lightroom book, then you could try his Photoshop book. I've also heard good things about Scott Kelby's books. Maybe you could go to a good bookstore and look through a few Photoshop books, just to get an idea of the style of them. There's sample chapters from some books online.
I think the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop will become clear when you start to work with Photoshop. As I said, I find using Lightroom as far as I can, then Photoshop when it's needed to be the best combination, and I think you'll find the same.
Having a common Camera Raw engine between Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom means that the settings can go backwards and forwards via XMP sidecars (or DNG files) - which is very helpful.
One of my tasks for today is to post-process a shoot from Tuesday, which was low light no flash work (typically 1/50s at f/3.5, ISO 1600). I'll use Lightroom 1.1 to take things as far as I can - including the new sharpening and Clarity features - then finish off with Noise Ninja and possibly PTLens in Photoshop, before importing the files back into Lightroom. Some have horrible lighting in one corner, which needs correcting - again, that will be done in Photoshop.
This is a perfect example of the synergy available. Lightroom is the richest environment for sorting, culling and ranking, also keywording and captioning. I can do the Develop work in Lightroom, then move to Photoshop for what Lightroom can't do.
Meanwhile - to Nikos and denypage - I know what you mean. I tried to stick to the terminology already in use in the thread rather than introduce more confusion.
I agree that the easiest way to think of Lightroom is as saving an original file and a recipe, rather than the end product of what has been done to it. (If you understand Smart Filters and Adjustment Layers in Photoshop CS3 - that's really what we're talking about). This difference in approach explains, for instance, why the snapshots and undo history in Photoshop are lost once you close the file.
I do, however, see more of a conceptual bar to individual pixel editing in Lightroom than denypage does - because I don't see where there's room to build that functionality into the Lightroom program. Of course, the distinction could increasingly blur (if the cloning features in Lightroom became more general case), but the way Lightroom works with a file and a recipe - and without basic features of Photoshop such as layers - would mean a great deal of code had to be added to support many basic Photoshop features.
To my mind it may make more sense to evolve and refine Photoshop than to re-implement large chunks of it in Lightroom, especially when those who want Photoshop like features probably already own and use Photoshop.
In the end, I think this is a moot point. There's lots that people have already wished for that will keep the Lightroom team busy (the SDK, soft proofing - and much more besides) that hasn't made it into Lightroom 1.1. I certainly look forward to the future!
David