PSE, Bridge, Lightroom, Lightroom CC, Photoshop - HELP

Looks like Cheryl got you answered on most of the other questions- but I'll chime in with my set up!

I also have a desktop (have been hoping for a laptop for the last couple years, but that budget always ends up going to something more important!) I have two monitors. I use PSCC & Lightroom Classic AND Lightroom mobile. I RARELY edit/organize photos in Lightroom- I use the app primarily to sync photos directly from my phone to my EHD. I have 1 EHD, as well as a cloud backup to Backblaze. I don't' use any sort of program to organize my supplies, other than my windows folders & my organization setup I've created. It works for me & I don't have time to try something different at this point in the game!

 

It sure can be overwhelming with all of the options at first, huh? Cheryl provided you with lots of great information.

I am less of a power user than a lot of people. I don't use Lightroom or Bridge although I do own Lightroom. I just never took the time to learn it well enough to feel comfortable with it, so... because I'm slow at it, I just don't use it. Sad but true.

I also don't use any of those programs to sort or tag my photos or supplies. I rely I my own organization methods which is simple and doesn't take me long to do. I have a folder for the year and inside the fold I have a folder for each month. If there was an event or special day, that gets it's own folder in the correct month. All the misc. picture just go in the proper month. I don't have any face recognition on my computer, but my phone does it for me and so does Google Photos which I use as a back up for my pictures.

To scrap (that's the important part for me! ) I use an OLD version of Photoshop CS5. I personally can't stand the idea of having to pay for my software each month, so I'm clinging to the version I bought when my current 10th grader was in kindergarten. It still works and does everything I need or want it to do. PSE is like a lighter version of Photoshop, but does what most people need to scrap with. In order to choose between the two programs now, you just need to decide if you want to own your software (you can purchase PSE) or rent your software (Photoshop is only available to rent these days $10-$20ish per month depending on your bundle).

If you come across any other questions or need more clarification as you're deciding... keep asking questions! There are so many knowledgeable people here!!

 

Personal preference: I don't use the facial recognition. I created keywords of each person's name and I just assign the name. For me, it's faster because typically a group of photos has the same people in the group shots. So I put the people on the paint brush, and paint the group ones. Then I can multi select photos that are the same people and tag that way.
That's probably because I have a lot of photos and the facial recognition has always been slow to me.

 

My setup currently:
I use Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC on my desktop computer.
I use a desktop with two monitors primarily. I have all my photos and supplies on this. I also have supplies and photos backed up on an external hard drive, and just photos on one more ehd ( I'm a little paranoid). I also have the entire desktop backed up online through Backblaze.

I also have a laptop, which I use the ehd with for my photos. It has pscc on it, but also Photoshop elements 14. I usually use elements unless I'm changing shadows. This is because my laptop is older and slower.

 

I'll start off by saying that I am tech challenged but I wanted to chime in to mention Google Photos for facial recognition. It has been a game changer for me because I don't have to tag photos and I can search for people, places, events or a specific time of year. I'm sure there are other folks here who can do a better job of speaking to the specifics to how Google Photos works and how it would apply to your workflow so I'm sorry I can't really help with that. You might want to check out a free class through www.modernphotosolutions.com called Photo Fabulous that talks about Google Photos. It was very helpful as a place to start.

 

Great thread because I have all of the above and only use PSCC and still use my old faithful PSE - I'm using 2018 and probably won't upgrade to 2019 for awhile. I also love Google face recognition and Flickr does it as well. Every time I try to use LR, I end up just getting frustrated - I had my photo editing and organization well in control before LR came with the PSCC "package". I've never used Bridge and a couple of others, either, (that came with the package).

I now have 2 external hard drives attached to my laptop. I'm putting more and more of my scrapping supplies on those and trying to keep my laptop more cleaned up. I have a lot of memory on my laptop, but I don't want it to get too full.

@Coreen you definitely came to the right place to find answers! This board is a wealth of information and they willingly share that knowledge!! Welcome and hope you stick around.

 

I have been using Lightroom for organizing and editing my photos since 2011, the year after I bought my DSLR and got serious about photography. For the last two years my DSLR enthusiasm has severely decreased but until just this summer I continued to believe I would even use Lightroom if I were only using my phone camera. I'm in a transition time. LR is a fabulous program. I'm just growing impatient with it a lot nowadays, which probably has more to do with having an old 2011 computer rather than Lightroom itself.

I've never used Bridge, so I can't comment on that. I remember when I switched from organizing in PSE to organizing in Lightroom I was so relieved because Lightroom worked so much better. Remember that was in 2011 though, so PSE Organizer could have improved over the last 8 years for all I know.

I switched to full Photoshop in 2016, but not for Photoshop. I switched in response to rumors that Lightroom would be moving cloud-only too. I do enjoy some of the additional features in full Photoshop now, but I never thought PSE was limited as far as scrapping. I might switch back someday. I keep it now, despite looking for ways to cut costs, because my husband also uses Photoshop.

As for my setup, I'm still using my old 2011 iMac with a 5Tb Western Digital EHD attached, which holds all of my photos and digital scrapbooking stash. It holds nearly all of my data, in fact. I don't save stuff on my internal drive in hopes it helps my machine run faster and smoother. I back up automatically with Netflix and manually with Smugmug.

 

It is overwhelming but just take it one thing at a time, read tutorials, watch videos...soon it will become more comfortable. You don't need lightroom at all to scrap with. But you need a program to create your pages on. Photoshop elements is a smaller version of photoshop and it takes up less resources on your computer (if ram, space, etc is an issue for you). There are tutorials and info for both so there is a lot of help for learing how to use them. Bridge is useful for viewing your digi products and you can drag them onto your LO easily, but it is not necessary. You can open folders on your computer and choose your digi products from there, so if you are overwhelmed, maybe start with learning PSE or PS first and then branch out to LR or bridge.

I use PS CC and Lightroom Classic. I have 2 monitors with my PC at home and have a laptop for when I am away from home. I keep my digi products on an EHD and have a second copy on another EHD for a backup and can take that with me when away from home. I've just started storing my digi product zip files on dropbox since I had a pro acct anyway and it makes sense to use what I already have. Otherwise, a backup program like Backblaze makes sense too. I had always had 2 copies of my products and thought that was safe b/c the chances of both drives failing at the same time and losing my stuff was unlikely to happen. But recently I upgraded my PC, got windows 10 and it encrypted and damaged many files on both drives so I ended up losing products. That's why I backup the zip files in dropbox, to ensure that doesn't happen again.

Good luck and hope you are soon having fun scrapping as you decide what to use and become comfortable with it.

 

Ditto.

Also ditto.

It's all so overwhelming at first. Perhaps focusing on learning your scrapping program will help you decide how best to edit your photos? I love PS but I just can't stand LR. *shrug* It's all so personal. You'll find what works for you, and as you've seen here already, there are always people who can help!

 

Agree with @Karen and @Tree City. I also do not use any of the programs since I don't use PS or PSE to scrap. I also don't tag my files. I've been scrapping so long without doing it that I'm sure it would slow me down to actually have stuff tagged!

I also have all my photos downloaded from my camera by date. The hierarchy is a yearly folder with a sub-folder for each month. Each day has a sub-folder within its month. I do not separate events on these downloaded photos. However, I do make folders for each event for photos I have scanned. I have a main folder called Images and each event is labeled by year/event so they sort oldest to newest. If photos are shared with me for any events, depending on how many I get, they get a sub-folder of their own. If it is just a few, I stick them in my year/month/day folder. Same with my camera photos... they get put into the year/month/day folder.

If it were me, I would not spend a lot of time tagging everything but just do a few things in the program you want to test. Work with it awhile and if it meets your needs, move forward with the organization.

I am a lover of Picasa but am trying to find a replacement since it has some issues that will never be corrected since it was discontinued. So I download a trial of something I see recommended, try it for awhile and see if it does what I want. So far nothing has but I keep looking!

 

Cheryl, is this the version you use, and does it include Bridge? It looks like it does since when I search for Bridge it brings me back to the list of programs... and, Happy Mother's Day!