NEWBIE BURN & DODGE QUESTION

[sonare]

While I have owned ancient versions of Photoshop (my newest is v5) back when I was a working pro in the BD (before digital) era, I need to make the move to LR or Aperture. CS cost does not make sense for a hobbyist like me but Elements may not do enough.

I am very interested in being able to burn & dodge, as well as import RAW from my Leica Digilux 2. I am relying on the experience of others to answer what may be a VERY basic and obvious question! I expect LR to be the winner in this forum, but while this ground likely has been previously trod (my search was not successful, however) your opinions are sought!

Rich

[john beardsworth]

What's your question? If it's "is there dodge and burn", yes in LR, no in Aperture. In LR it's with either a local brush or a gradient. You can apply them multiple times, dodging and burning, and also altering contrast, saturation.

John

[David Good]

And, the localized adjustments are non-destructive, they can be changed later if you like. The more I work with this brush set the more I like it, it does take a bit to get used to at first though.

Dave

[Baxter]

Correction to above post - Aperture does have a Burn and Dodge plug-in module which comes with the software.

[john beardsworth]

Not a correction at all. Aperture is merely supplied with a external editing utility launched in a modal window, to which tif files are sent for destructive dodging and burning.... Lightroom has dodging and burning entirely within the application and working non-destructively.

[Baxter]

Nevertheless - it provides a dodge and burn facility - your original post is misleading in this respect

[Schewe]

Nevertheless - it provides a dodge and burn facility - your original post is misleading in this respect

So was your's...

To be accurate, Aperture needs to actually render the raw file before doing any local corrections...you end up with a rendered file iteration and you lose the ability to do the corrections as metadata (parametric editing) on a raw file.

[john beardsworth]

Nevertheless - it provides a dodge and burn facility - your original post is misleading in this respect

I stand by my "in" distinction. In practice, the difference leads to very different behaviours. Aperture's dodge and burn strap-on is just like sending to Photoshop, ie a destructive process which you apply exceptionally as you peel off a single image for its final output. In Lightroom, it's simply part of your routine workflow, so you're now adding "interpretative" dodging and burning adjustments to multiple raw images at the same time as you're applying "corrective" adjustments such as WB or exposure etc. I'll happily criticise aspects of Lightroom (eg you should be able to apply the gradient tool to multiple images simultaneously) but Adobe did a really good job on the dodging and burning tools while Apple merely strapped on an external utility and hyped it as a "plug-in".

John

[mmurph]

The dodging and burning functions in Lightropom are quite nice.

You can edit an area with an adjustment brush, then go back in later to change the amount of burning or dodging to that area.

One small frustration: if you stack up several adjustments, there doesn't appear to be a way to identify them (amount applied, function - exposure, skin smoothing, etc.) with out clicking on each to see the changes show up in the tool panel.  It would be nice to have a named adjustment, like layers in PS.  

May be there somehwere? Still learning LR.

[Per Ofverbeck]

While I have owned ancient versions of Photoshop (my newest is v5) back when I was a working pro in the BD (before digital) era, I need to make the move to LR or Aperture. CS cost does not make sense for a hobbyist like me but Elements may not do enough.

I am very interested in being able to burn & dodge, as well as import RAW from my Leica Digilux 2. I am relying on the experience of others to answer what may be a VERY basic and obvious question! I expect LR to be the winner in this forum, but while this ground likely has been previously trod (my search was not successful, however) your opinions are sought!

Rich

FWIW, I do use Lightroom 2.1 with my Digilux 2 raws, also with raws from the D-lux 3 and Nikon D200.  It works without a hitch, and all adjustments I need are easy to do (I have to add that the Digilux 2 files often are so good that they´re better left alone, or given only a quite mild sharpening.  The other two cameras are another story, however....   ).

Dodge and burn works very well, too, when needed, and the post-crop vignetting is great.  The clone tool does work, but for more complicated tasks, Photoshop does beat it.