Lightroom Vs Photoshop | Secrets to Boost Editing(110% Guaranteed)
Are you navigating in the sea of editing tools and unable to decide which one to use?
If these tools involve Lightroom or Photoshop, the effort is worth it.
You desire enhanced and professional images, extensive editing capabilities, and everything perfect on one plate.
As a beginner, you might find Photoshop’s vast toolbox intimidating.
According to a recent survey, users voted about Lightroom vs Photoshop usage as;
“58% of the Photographers use Lightroom, and 22% of them use Photoshop due to its advanced features or both for editing.”
Traditional editing can consume your creative hours, right? What’s the perfect choice?
To make an informed decision, I am uncovering the potential strengths of both Lightroom and Photoshop to help you create stunning visuals.
You will cherish your creativity and editing skills when you see your raw idea or draft refined into a final product.
What is Adobe Lightroom and what does it do?
A powerful Photo editing tool where you can create your style, apply filters, batch edit photos, and produce stunning pictures with an easy-to-use interface called Lightroom.
It was developed by Adobe for image organization and image processing as a companion to Photoshop in 2007.
It is compatible with iOS and Android devices, desktops, and computers and has many features to improve your editing skills.
Whether you are a photographer, graphic designer, or hobbyist, you can make on-the-fly edits to your images with simple clicks using Lightroom.
Many photographers initially consider Lightroom a perfect choice as it can handle large files. That means it can do more work quickly and efficiently.
Besides, its interface is easier to use than Photoshop. You can check best editing apps with ultimate features as well to make a best choice for polishing your editing skills.
What is Adobe Photoshop and what does it do?
Photoshop is a commonly employed industry-standard image editing software that is used for implications, image structure, retouching, website mockups, and editing pictures.
Photoshop was first developed in 1987 by American brothers Thomas and John Knoll, and later on, the distribution was sold to Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1988.
Since Photoshop has quick editing aspects of images, such as lighting or coloring, to turn them into new creations, it is mostly used by graphic designers and photographers.
You can use Photoshop to edit and compose raster images, as well as support masking and alpha compositing.
The reasons behind choosing Photoshop include Photo manipulation, retouching and restoration, creative design, editing, enhancing photos, robust text, and typography tools.
Photoshop is one of the best editing tools due to its powerful editing capabilities, non-destructive editing, advanced filters, and many more.
Should You Start with Lightroom or Photoshop?
People ask this common question before starting their journey: Which is best for them among Lightroom vs Photoshop?
If you are a beginner photographer, your requirement would be intuitive photo editing software, and Lightroom is considered the best to begin with.
Most photographers take both software in a way that;
“The key isn’t to choose Lightroom vs Photoshop but understanding how they work together. Lightroom excels at managing and editing large photo collections, while Photoshop masters creative manipulation.”
However, it would help to go for Photoshop when you have practiced Lightroom and can use advanced editing tools.
Photoshop with a mix of Lightroom is the best choice if you need advanced manipulation techniques.
Unique Features of Lightroom that aren’t available in Photoshop
To assist you in understanding the differences between Lightroom and Photoshop, I am enlisting some unique features of Lightroom that are not available in Photoshop.
Efficient Image Organization and File Handling Catalog
Lightroom is efficient in image organization and file handling because it uses a catalog. A catalog is a database containing all the information about the images.
As you start editing, the original image remains intact and untouched, and edits are managed using catalogs without altering the original image.
This is called non-destructive editing, which organizes images and assists users in browsing and accessing the photos efficiently.
On the other hand, Photoshop alters the original image, and all the edits are done on the original image.
To create a catalog in Photoshop, you must make a PSD file with complexities due to various versions of an image.
For an open source app, you can have a detailed look over Lightroom vs RawTherapee, to make your images like a PRO!
Smart Photo Search and Keyword Tagging
Since Lightroom is famous for organizing large photos, it offers smart photo search and keyword tagging.
We must create collections to utilize the Smart Photo Search in Lightroom. A collection may include an image in multiple forms without its duplicate.
Drag a folder from the folder window to the collections panel, giving it the necessary name, to easily create a collection.
For instance, you can make a folder in the collection panel for your “Friends” and drag all the images of your friends into the folder.
This will keep your pictures organized, and you can find any desired image easily.
Keyword Tagging is a way to search images that asks for certain keywords to be used in the photos.
To locate the precise photos you wish to modify, using these keywords.
For instance, you can tag a collection of beach-related images with the keyword “Beach” and later on use this keyword to find beach-related images.
Batch Editing – The Biggest Advantage of Lightroom
Batch Editing is the biggest advantage that makes Lightroom a completely separate software from Photoshop.
Batch Editing refers to editing multiple images simultaneously to save your hours. This feature needs to be included in Photoshop beyond its advanced features.
Using presets, you can make hundreds of edits with a single click. For instance, you want to apply sharpness to your “Travel images” collection.
You can easily do it in a second by accessing the sharpness adjustment slider. Nevertheless, editing this with Photoshop within a short time frame is not feasible.
Unique Features of Photoshop that aren’t available in Lightroom
Like Lightroom, Photoshop has certain features that are not available in Lightroom, making it more advanced.
Ultimate Graphic Design Abilities in Photoshop
Graphic designers choose Photoshop over Lightroom due to its exceptional graphic design abilities.
Therefore, as a graphic designer, you can easily select Photoshop as the best choice for editing images due to these advanced tools.
- Create & Edit Vector Shapes – You can use Photoshop to create and edit shapes for creating logos, icons, and illustrations without losing the image quality.
- Text Editing with Different Fonts – It’s simple to add text with a variety of fonts and patterns to your photographs using Photoshop. You can add and modify text according to your needs and may create text layers using various colors and sizes on your designs.
- Extensive Drawing Tools – Photoshop is famous for its digital artwork and illustrations due to its advanced and extensive drawing tools, such as brushes and pencils.
All these features are unavailable in Lightroom, and you can easily use them according to your requirements and interest in Photoshop.
Advanced Photo Editing and Retouching Tools
Photoshop offers professionals advanced photo editing and retouching tools not available in Adobe Lightroom.
Expert photographers like to use refined tools like Photoshop when they want exact control over their photographs.
- Clone Stamp Tool – The Clone Stamp Tool is famous for “copying & pasting” as you copy pixels from one area to another. In other words, it duplicates certain regions of an image to remove any distractions or to retouch the imperfections.
- Healing Brush Tool – This Tool assists you in fixing imperfections in images like scratches, wrinkles, and others to make a perfect version. If your image contains any scars or dark spots, you can easily remove them using the healing brush tool.
- Content-Aware Fill – The Content-Aware Fill is responsible for filling a selected area of an image with a similar one from the other parts of that image. It assists in automatically regenerating the missing parts of the image or providing replacements to achieve perfection.
Photoshop tools gallery is filled with advanced features and tools, but the above is one of them that makes edits more amazing.
Read Also – Lightroom vs Darktable – Which one is preferable?
Layer-Based Editing (Gaining Command over the Editing Process)
The most fascinating tool in Photoshop is layer-based Editing, which means you can work on different parts of the images freely.
This provides complete control of your editing process as you can arrange your layers, hide them, or adjust the individual ones.
For instance, if I make a mistake over any individual layer, I can remove the layer by making certain adjustments.
This lets you create non-destructive changes so that layer editing won’t undo all of your hard work.
Layer editing provides flexible adjustments over the image without altering the original image.
While editing layers, you must remember the blending modes that provide overlays and adjustments and let you know how layers interact with each other.
Features Available in Lightroom and Photoshop
| Features | Lightroom | Photoshop |
| Non-destructive Editing | ✅ | Partially* |
| RAW Image Processing | ✅ | ✅ |
| Library Tools | ✅ | ❎ |
| Advanced Color Editing | ❎ | ✅ |
| Layer-based Editing | ❎ | ✅ |
| Presets and Profiles | ✅ | ❎ |
| HDR Merge & Panorama | ✅ | ✅ |
| Extensive Text Editing | ❎ | ✅ |
| Content-Aware Fill | ❎ | ✅ |
| 3D Editing | ❎ | ✅ |
Pricing Factors of Lightroom vs Photoshop
The free version of both software doesn’t offer as much value and advanced options as the premium one. To gain these premium features, you must buy a pricing plan with a variety for Adobe users.
For instance, you can choose a Photography plan, a Student’s plan, and an Adobe Creative Cloud Plan according to your budget.
“The great news for Adobe users who use Lightroom or Photoshop is that they can use a 7-day free trial.”
However, you may take a subscription plan starting at $9.99/month; however, Lightroom is a less expensive software than Photoshop.
Winner – Lightroom
Loyal Tip – Buying a Photoshop subscription will polish your editing skills.
User Interface & Editing Workflow – Lightroom vs Photoshop
Most people prefer Lightroom because it has a clean interface compared to Photoshop.
The smooth editing and sliders make it easy for beginners to use, and they can easily manage and organize images.
For Batch Editing, you have to adjust the sharpness and exposure of your images. Due to Lightroom’s streamlined workflow, you can easily do this using the slider option.
On the contrary, Photoshop has a complex user interface, and you will find many options with advanced tools.
This makes editing difficult if you are not a PRO, as it has a more complex workflow than Lightroom.
If you want to run Photoshop smoothly, you should know the different parts of Photoshop and how they work.
- Menu Bar – Just like other apps, the Menu Bar contains different options for editing, creating, and saving. For instance, the File Menu is used to open and save different files. You can use the Image menu to make adjustments to the image, like image size.
- Tools Bar – You can find them on the left to access different tools. This bar contains various tools for editing; for instance, you can select tools for cropping, retouching images, and many more.
- Document Tabs – These tabs assist users in working with multiple documents simultaneously and easily switching from one document to another; you can see them as tabs.
- Options Bar – The options bar assists users to customize the tool according to their needs by expanding different options.
- Panels – On the right of the screen, you will find different panels to access different features in Photoshop quickly. It contains layers to edit and manage your work’s layers efficiently.
Winner – Lightroom
Learning Curve Facts for Beginners – Lightroom vs Photoshop
Again, when talking about the learning curve facts for beginners, Lightroom wins as it is easy to learn and use.
Its clean interface lets beginners start their editing from Lightroom, unlike Photoshop. Once they excel in Lightroom, switching to a complex interface like Photoshop becomes easy.
Whereas excelling in Photoshop as a beginner is a difficult task as you want more time to learn it. Tap on Photoshop, you will find a lot of powerful advanced editing options.
To have precise control over image editing, you must learn to curve higher and steeper than Lightroom.
Winner – Lightroom
Uncover Editing Capabilities – Lightroom vs Photoshop
While uncovering the editing capabilities, though Photoshop has a complex interface, it is more advanced editing software.
However, people question why there is a need for Lightroom when Photoshop can perform all functions more efficiently and quickly.
The satisfied statement for the users of both software is;
“There was a need for software whose editing capabilities are simple to learn for beginners and can perform Photoshop functions in a simple layout.”
Lightroom was released on the demand of Photographers who want to edit and handle large collections of files.
Using Lightroom, it is simple to perform batch editing at a fast speed and manage images with a single click. ‘
Besides, Soft Proofing in Lightroom is another factor that makes it a Photographer’s choice. Photoshop isn’t directly for photographers.
Therefore, its advanced and extensive editing capabilities are only handled by PRO users. What turns Photoshop’s editing capabilities into strengths contain the following facts;
- Editing on separate layers allows for complex editing and image compositing.
- Precise selections for localized adjustments.
- Tools for cloning, healing, retouching, filters, and special effects.
Summary – You can choose Lightroom for initial edits, image organization, editing, and a large collection of photos. Photoshop is perfect for detailed edits, creative projects, layer editing, and precise control.
Thousands High-Quality Actions & Presets
Photoshop has hand-previewed actions that control your project step by step. Once you have applied various actions, you can use layers to adjust things.
For instance, to create cartoon paintings, you can use the Cartoonize Photoshop action to create digital artwork and oil paint effects.
Then, to adjust brightness, contrast, boost saturation, and sharpen the image, click “Vibrant Pop.” It will automatically perform the actions you want to see in the picture.
On the contrary, Lightroom uses Presets, the pre-adjusted settings or parameters to ensure a consistent visual theme in multiple images. You cannot customize them as the Photoshop actions because they are not scripted.
When to use each Tool – Lightroom vs Photoshop
Users often think that when using Adobe Lightroom is preferable and when Photoshop becomes a source of actual creativity.
To handle this confusion, it is good to draw a line over the ultimate features of both tools. Let us have a look over the features of both apps and why users love them for editing purposes!
If you want to make quick edits over your images and prefer better image organization, Lightroom is the best choice.
Whereas, Photoshop is a green flag for complex adjustments, complex image manipulation, and composites. Lightroom has in-depth roots to adjust color, exposure, and other images elements.
Another method which individuals love to do is to start with Lightroom, utilize 80% of the Lightroom tools.
Once you have done all with Lightroom, go to Photoshop, learn the tools that aren’t available in Lightroom and make your editing more professional.
PROS and CONS of Using Lightroom
PROS
CONS
PROS and CONS of Using Photoshop
PROS
CONS
What do people ask about the comparison between Lightroom and Photoshop?
Final Thoughts on the Comparison of Lightroom vs Photoshop
I have made a clear way to distinguish between both powerful editing software with examples.
The final decision depends on your needs and choices, whether you want a simple interface or may perform editing with a complex one.
However, beginners should always go for Lightroom first if they want to excel in Photoshop later. If you are a professional and there is no issue with the interface, you should use both to get tremendous results.
Firstly, you should use Lightroom for basic adjustments and export images to Photoshop. This is easily possible by Cmd/Ctrl+E and then making necessary edits with Photoshop.
