what are the differences?
Lightroom is a full darkroom - think of it as the difference between tweaking images, and actually adding/removing stuff. Lightroom for making exposure, contrast etc perfect, PS/Elements for putting your mother-in-law's face on a dinosaur.
And at least as useful as the darkroom stuff, LR also organises images - it handles the whole workflow from importing the images to storing and backnig them up, to tagging them all so you can find them again.
Lightroom has cataloguing but no layers, the editing in it is excellent though and I find it's enough for 99% of my photo editing as opposed to image manipulation.
The editing is different though, I actually much prefer it as an editing workflow as its non-destructive and easy to create and compare multiple edits.
I heartily recommend it, its not that often PS gets dusted off for photos anymore.
Yes, that's another good difference i forgot - LR doesn't edit the original image at all, it jsut stores a series of operations and performs them when you export. So you can always go back to the original image. It's also more suited to RAWs, though it'll handle anything.
interesting, cheers guys
I've just downloaded a trial version of Lightroom, RD.
Very impressed with it so far. Different in its application to PS - pretty much geared around making non-destructive tonal changes in a much more controllable and subtle way than you can with PS. No layers though.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_lightroom
[EDIT - beaten to it!]
I use both, Lightroom is excellent & deals with pixel manipulation ie altering shade or tone. Also image cropping straightening and cataloging... however if you want to change elements of the picture (no pun intended) such as cutting out one bit to blur the background or change the colour of a certain part of the picture then Elements is better.
90% of the time I just use Lightroom, it is certainly easier to change white balance or exposure issues