Lenzy, right in the PP8 initial training /get to know us video they say that they want you to use LR still and are not trying to compete or take over LR and yes it does work as a plug in to LR and not as a stand alone, which it will also do if you only want to use PP8. Once you say edit the image in PP8 (from LR) and then save the file it will take you right back to LR to continue your edits.

As usual a Great lesson here! You got me on the Adj tool duplicate move! That’s an awesome secret! Well, not a secret anymore. 🙂

Dennis

Hi. I’d say Lightroom is still the place where your photos should start. Developing, editing, toning, etc… Then if you want to do more detailed work Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements is the place (PP8 still isn’t there for compositing yet). But if you just want effects and some layering capabilities, then PP8 would work fine. Right now, nothing replaces Lightroom for overall photo management and workflow. Hope this helps.

I also bought PS Elements (and Scott’s PS Elements book) so I could jump over to PS Elements for those handful of things that Lightroom either can’t do at all or doesn’t do well/easily. I haven’t used Elements yet or read the book. Like I said, it’s only been a year of shooting RAW and that’s hardly enough time to really learn Lightroom enough to what Lightroom’s true limitations are versus what the limitations of Lightroom are due to my lack of experience.

Now, I’m at the point where I’d like to begin doing some things that I know Lightroom isn’t the best tool for, like removing a fire hydrant or putting a portrait subject in front of an alternative background. Before reading this series, I would have opened my PS Elements book and started training. After reading your comments on the onOne software, I looked into it and it looks like Perfect Photo Suite 8 (PPS8) is no longer an extension to Lightroom, but rather a product positioning itself to replace Lightroom entirely.

Based on my limited research, it looks like PPS8 doesn’t (yet) have Lightroom’s cataloguing/organization capabilities (collection sets, keywords, etc), but as far as actually adjusting images, PPS8 provides one-stop image processing, instead of 90-percent Lightroom/10-percent Some Other App.

I know that this website is an odd place to be asking if I should move away from Lightroom at my next software refresh, but I would really like your opinion on this. Consider my perspective as a person with limited Lightroom experience and no PS Elements experience at all. Given that I’m on the ground floor of learning these post-processing apps, does it make sense to transition to PPS8 for 100-percent of post-processing since it looks like it’s on track to be a full Lightroom/PS Elements replacement? If I can use only one app to handle the entire gamut of post-processing, that would be ideal and it looks (to a novice) like onOne is positioning PPS8 to be that app. You started me down this path, sir. Now, I need a little more guidance because I’m sure there are lots of considerations that I’m unaware of.

Well I never knew that…

Thanks!