Post-Processing Software (Lightroom etc.)

[tbc]

What are people using for post-processing?

I know Lightroom is the de facto standard, but as a Sony user, I get a rather HUGE discount to use Capture One 8 Pro instead.  It turns out to be $30 USD for the full package, with the stipulation that only jpegs and Sony ARW files can be opened (this is what it sounds like to me). 

From literally all the reviews, it says that C1.8P absolutely tears apart Lightroom 4 and 5 in terms of bringing back highlights without washing out midtones.

I've downloaded the trial version and to be honest, I don't have enough PP skills to determine a winner (I'm most DEFINITELY underutilizing both programs).  I thought I would ask everyone elses' their thoughts.  As someone inexperienced with both programs and therefore have no workflow habits, does Capture one with its superior image manipulations win out, or is it limited by fundamental issues with other aspects of the program? 

[Sniping]

I'm not sure which one is better, and to me, the differences aren't worth the trouble of switching programs and relearning.

I just use what I've been using and what works for me, which is Lightroom

[HoffmanMyster]

As a fellow Sony user, I am very curious about their program. I'm currently using Photoshop for my minimal processing, if any (color adjustment and curves - most have none). I'm sure I could produce even better photos with more effort, but I don't have experience with that (I learned on film) so I'm looking forward to hearing the opinions of others. 

[tp4tissue]

As an Arrrgh-Matey brand software user..   I'd get both and try them out..

[TheSoulhunter]

Currently I use...
DxO Optics Pro 9 and Adobe Photoshop CS6 (plus Nik SilverEfex Pro)

[madhias]

I use Lightroom, and almost never use Photoshop. Main reason I use it is because of the speed and how fast I can edit 50 pictures, and get 5 nicely done out of it in a short time. That's the most important part for me to use a workflow software instead of a single picture editor.

I always look what's available out there, but I did not try Capture One yet! Last one I used a little bit is DxO Optics, but it did not gave me something I don't already have.

I don't edit too much though, mostly white-balance, exposure settings, lens profiles, and cropping. That's it!

[jacobolus]

If you want to spend the time (years) to become a true expert, nothing currently beats Photoshop. Photoshop vs. Lightroom is sort of like playing basketball vs. playing one of those basketball shooting games at the arcade.

[Moralless]

Currently I use the basic photo editing settings on the default photo viewing app on Windows 8 ) I'd like to be proficient with photoshop one day, but I'm not really a fan of the subscription system they have for it and I'm too lazy to find a free version of it on the internet

[bueller]

Lightroom all the way. Back when I was shooting a few gigs a week it was a necessity in order to get my photos done on time, PS is obviously more powerful but it's much slower going when you're dealing with thousands of photos a week.

[jacobolus]

I use Lightroom, and almost never use Photoshop. Main reason I use it is because of the speed and how fast I can edit 50 pictures, and get 5 nicely done out of it in a short time. [...] I don't edit too much though, mostly white-balance, exposure settings, lens profiles, and cropping. That's it!

Lightroom all the way. [...] it was a necessity in order to get my photos done on time, PS is obviously more powerful but it's much slower going when you're dealing with thousands of photos a week.

Getting fast with Photoshop definitely takes a lot of practice, but if you take a Photoshop master with a decade of experience, they’ll be able to accomplish the same adjustments as the Lightroom user, with better quality output, in about the same amount of time, or potentially even faster.

The thing about Photoshop is that it can be used in many different ways, and it’s possible to spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 hours on each picture, depending on how much you care about the output and how good the original file is.

For anyone looking to develop a very fast Photoshop technique, I’d recommend reading Dan Margulis’s most recent book Modern Photoshop Color Workflow. I don’t agree with everything Dan says, but there’s quite a bit of insight packed in there. (Disclaimer: I was a “beta reader” of this book, helping to proofread the first ~half of it.)

[madhias]

I use Lightroom, and almost never use Photoshop. Main reason I use it is because of the speed and how fast I can edit 50 pictures, and get 5 nicely done out of it in a short time. [...] I don't edit too much though, mostly white-balance, exposure settings, lens profiles, and cropping. That's it!

Lightroom all the way. [...] it was a necessity in order to get my photos done on time, PS is obviously more powerful but it's much slower going when you're dealing with thousands of photos a week.

Getting fast with Photoshop definitely takes a lot of practice, but if you take a Photoshop master with a decade of experience, they’ll be able to accomplish the same adjustments as the Lightroom user, with better quality output, in about the same amount of time, or potentially even faster.

The thing about Photoshop is that it can be used in many different ways, and it’s possible to spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 hours on each picture, depending on how much you care about the output and how good the original file is.

For anyone looking to develop a very fast Photoshop technique, I’d recommend reading Dan Margulis’s most recent book Modern Photoshop Color Workflow. I don’t agree with everything Dan says, but there’s quite a bit of insight packed in there. (Disclaimer: I was a “beta reader” of this book, helping to proofread the first ~half of it.)

Meh. I am a prepress operator and work with Photoshop on a daily basis, and since about 10 years it is part of my daily income. I do know exactly the difference between those too. You are comparing two different types of cars from the same company. You do have almost the same developing options in both applications, with of course more powerful editing options afterwards in Photoshop. But Photoshop is *not* a workflow software at all. With LR you are using a database of your photo library and take care of it.

It is just not about the time you need for one picture. It is about the time you need to sort and edit hundreds of pictures.

[tbc]

I use Lightroom, and almost never use Photoshop. Main reason I use it is because of the speed and how fast I can edit 50 pictures, and get 5 nicely done out of it in a short time. [...] I don't edit too much though, mostly white-balance, exposure settings, lens profiles, and cropping. That's it!

Lightroom all the way. [...] it was a necessity in order to get my photos done on time, PS is obviously more powerful but it's much slower going when you're dealing with thousands of photos a week.

Getting fast with Photoshop definitely takes a lot of practice, but if you take a Photoshop master with a decade of experience, they’ll be able to accomplish the same adjustments as the Lightroom user, with better quality output, in about the same amount of time, or potentially even faster.

The thing about Photoshop is that it can be used in many different ways, and it’s possible to spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 hours on each picture, depending on how much you care about the output and how good the original file is.

For anyone looking to develop a very fast Photoshop technique, I’d recommend reading Dan Margulis’s most recent book Modern Photoshop Color Workflow. I don’t agree with everything Dan says, but there’s quite a bit of insight packed in there. (Disclaimer: I was a “beta reader” of this book, helping to proofread the first ~half of it.)

Meh. I am a prepress operator and work with Photoshop on a daily basis, and since about 10 years it is part of my daily income. I do know exactly the difference between those too. You are comparing two different types of cars from the same company. You do have almost the same developing options in both applications, with of course more powerful editing options afterwards in Photoshop. But Photoshop is *not* a workflow software at all. With LR you are using a database of your photo library and take care of it.

It is just not about the time you need for one picture. It is about the time you need to sort and edit hundreds of pictures.

idk about photoshop, but lightroom has tethering and autoapplication of your own presets as the photos come in. 

[bueller]

I use Lightroom, and almost never use Photoshop. Main reason I use it is because of the speed and how fast I can edit 50 pictures, and get 5 nicely done out of it in a short time. [...] I don't edit too much though, mostly white-balance, exposure settings, lens profiles, and cropping. That's it!

Lightroom all the way. [...] it was a necessity in order to get my photos done on time, PS is obviously more powerful but it's much slower going when you're dealing with thousands of photos a week.

Getting fast with Photoshop definitely takes a lot of practice, but if you take a Photoshop master with a decade of experience, they�ll be able to accomplish the same adjustments as the Lightroom user, with better quality output, in about the same amount of time, or potentially even faster.

The thing about Photoshop is that it can be used in many different ways, and it�s possible to spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 hours on each picture, depending on how much you care about the output and how good the original file is.

For anyone looking to develop a very fast Photoshop technique, I�d recommend reading Dan Margulis�s most recent book Modern Photoshop Color Workflow. I don�t agree with everything Dan says, but there�s quite a bit of insight packed in there. (Disclaimer: I was a �beta reader� of this book, helping to proofread the first ~half of it.)

Meh. I am a prepress operator and work with Photoshop on a daily basis, and since about 10 years it is part of my daily income. I do know exactly the difference between those too. You are comparing two different types of cars from the same company. You do have almost the same developing options in both applications, with of course more powerful editing options afterwards in Photoshop. But Photoshop is *not* a workflow software at all. With LR you are using a database of your photo library and take care of it.

It is just not about the time you need for one picture. It is about the time you need to sort and edit hundreds of pictures.

This was key for me. LR has everything you need to quickly sort through thousands of photos, tag the keepers and flag the garbage for deletion. Once I got my workflow down I could pare down 1000 frames to 20 odd shots for publication in under an hour.

[MOZ]

Lightroom mostly, sometimes Photoshop if I need to edit something like removing artifacts or distractions.

DXO for noise removal if I was forced to use a high ISO and I want a good shot out of it, this is rare though, however the DXO noise removal is the best out there.

[jacobolus]

But Photoshop is *not* a workflow software at all. With LR you are using a database of your photo library and take care of it.  [...] It is just not about the time you need for one picture. It is about the time you need to sort and edit hundreds of pictures.

This was key for me. LR has everything you need to quickly sort through thousands of photos, tag the keepers and flag the garbage for deletion. Once I got my workflow down I could pare down 1000 frames to 20 odd shots for publication in under an hour.

Well that’s all fine, but the topic under discussion is “post-processing software”, not “photo library organizing and tagging software”.

I think Lightroom is fine as an organizer, but I wouldn’t use it for producing final output of any photograph that matters.

When I produce prints with Photoshop starting from “raw” camera files, I zero out all settings in Adobe Camera Raw, import as 16 bit/channel ProPhoto RGB image (for most images another RGB profile would work just as well, but sometimes the extra range helps if there are very blown out regions in one or more channels), and take the image straight to Photoshop. The first thing I do there is convert to CIELAB mode. Then I use a several actions of my own devising to create a bunch of my own adjustment tools.

The actual arithmetic done by Adobe Camera Raw (and therefore by Lightroom) is basically wrong, in my personal opinion, and even the most trivial adjustments end up distorting color relationships and losing information in ways that are difficult to recover later. For most images the resulting appearance may be acceptable for many photographers, and that’s totally fine. I personally find I can always get a better result using only tools in Photoshop and entirely ignoring Camera Raw. [A different raw processor might provide some better tools than Adobe’s, but I’ve never done a proper in-depth investigation. It’s on my long-term todo list. I don’t have any experience Capture One.]

[tigersharkdude]

Question for LR users, I have LR5 (iirc) on a Samsung EVO SSD, it was running fast but the last week or so it's been running extremely slow ... any ideas?

[bueller]

Question for LR users, I have LR5 (iirc) on a Samsung EVO SSD, it was running fast but the last week or so it's been running extremely slow ... any ideas?

Optimise your catalog, it can get pretty bloated with old thumbnails sometimes.

[tigersharkdude]

Question for LR users, I have LR5 (iirc) on a Samsung EVO SSD, it was running fast but the last week or so it's been running extremely slow ... any ideas?

Optimise your catalog, it can get pretty bloated with old thumbnails sometimes.

Care to explain how? I don't think I've ever done that

[bueller]

Question for LR users, I have LR5 (iirc) on a Samsung EVO SSD, it was running fast but the last week or so it's been running extremely slow ... any ideas?

Optimise your catalog, it can get pretty bloated with old thumbnails sometimes.

Care to explain how? I don't think I've ever done that

Choose File > Optimize Catalog

Check out this article too, should prove helpful.

[madhias]

The actual arithmetic done by Adobe Camera Raw (and therefore by Lightroom) is basically wrong, in my personal opinion, and even the most trivial adjustments end up distorting color relationships and losing information in ways that are difficult to recover later. For most images the resulting appearance may be acceptable for many photographers, and that’s totally fine. I personally find I can always get a better result using only tools in Photoshop and entirely ignoring Camera Raw.

I see! I never dig too deep like you do it seems, and I have been satisfied with my results more or less so far. Photography skills are important too If I have to go too far with editing, I am maybe not satisfied with the picture itself then. I do some fine art printing on a printing press maybe once a year, but only 1c, not color, and there I am heavily editing in Photoshop.

[blackbox]

I use rawtherapee and it have been intuitive to use so far.

[tbc]

okay...so I've been trying out capture 8 pro.

I seen 2 issues so far:

1. doesn't seem to have layers in the same way as lightroom does.
2. doesn't have support for plugins.  to be honest, this really only affect topez denoise.

anyone wanna comment on my observations?

[ctm]

I subscribe a PS and LR combo (which was cheaper than subscribing to PS alone). I mainly use PS since layers is really convenient for trying out different stuff and undo and redo.

[tbc]

okay...so I've been trying out capture 8 pro.

I seen 2 issues so far:

1. doesn't seem to have layers in the same way as lightroom does.
2. doesn't have support for plugins.  to be honest, this really only affect topez denoise.

anyone wanna comment on my observations?

1.  okay.  i found how to do layers in capture one pro 8.  it's called 'local adjustments'