Photoshop 4 extended and lightroom.

Question

Hi.
I understand a tool like lightroom is highly effective and important. It is also highly useful.
But how necessary is it? Does Photoshop 4 or 5 have the tools needed to edit the photos? Some of the options looked the same when I checked out lightroom 2 and 3.
I understand lightroom 3 is newer and with more features, but how does it compare with 2? Anyone used both? In the lightroom forum, a person told me lR3 is native to 64-bit. What else is a noticable difference.
Would a person be able to run PS4 or 5 with a 32-bit Lightroom? Do you need bit-bridging? I assume no since they act independently. But are your images going to suffer?
Thank you.

Answer 1

It kind of depends on the overview of what you want to do with your images.
Yes, Photoshop has everything you need to edit photos, soup to nuts.  It facilitates doing things to multiple images with things like Camera Raw being able to process settings for multiple images at a time, the Image Processor script, automating actions, etc.  Photoshop is good for editing modest numbers of images, creating unique designs, etc.
Photoshop CS4 and CS5 are provided in both 32 and 64 bit builds.  The 64 bit version is more efficient, has fewer limitations, and in some cases makes better use of multi-core processing.
Lightroom, by contrast, provides database services and a streamlined processing workflow optimized for pumping a lot of imagery through your digital darkroom in a production fashion.  It may be attractive to you if you have tons of digital work to crunch through on lots of images.
I don't have personal experience with Lightroom as I don't have it myself, but I have used Photoshop since the early 1990s.
-Noel