Lightroom vs. Photoshop: What’s The Difference?

Wondering what the difference is between Lightroom & Photoshop or what to use when editing your photographs?

Both programs are truly amazing and can give your image those finishing touches you are looking for. Both carry traits or abilities that the other program can preform but are drastically made for different purposes. Lightroom is a simplistic version of photoshop, designed to make it easier for the user to understand how to edit their photos. The program specifies in working on exposure, tone, hue and any other adjustments to do with lighting. As for Photoshop, these are more drastic changes as for removing unwanted items out of a photo or photoshopping someone into a completely different background.

Adobe is the leader in photo editing programs and is the preferred choice of photographers all over the world. Whether you’re a beginner or a full-time professional photographer, these programs are important tools you need to know.

Advantages of Lightroom

• Easy To Learn
• Organizes photos within the program
• Great editing options in a simplified format
• Can reverse edits and can have multiple versions of the photo
• Create & import presets for images making editing fast and gives a collection of photos the same look
• Comes with an automatic back up system 

When To Use Lightroom

• Looking to change the colour, exposure or resizing of the image
• When dumping files from a memory card organize into Lightroom
• When looking to store and organize your photos
• Converting images from RAW to JPEG for multiple sizes
• The first step in giving your photos the final touches

Photo by @josephtpearson via Unsplash

What is Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop is the original photo editing tool made for extreme photo editing, from colour and tone to combining images and creating a unique world within one image. Starting as a simple digital photo editing program has now expanded and is used by architects, graphic & 3D designers, publishers, animators, photographers (of course) and many more. Photoshop is a pixel-level editor, this means the user has more control over the look of the image vs other programs but makes the process is much longer as each image is precisely edited and can be hard to learn all of its functions.

Before & After

Advantages of Photoshop

• Has the editing tools of Lightroom and more
• Can combine multiple photos into one
• Layer editing
• Remove objects from photos
• Facial and body tuning
• Turn your photos into something completely different or start from scratch and create a new art piece 

When To Use Photoshop

• Major adjustment to an image 
• Removing unwanted object or feature from the image
• Complexion adjustment and spot healing
• Layering or multi-layer edits
• Fix any imperfections within the photo
• Combining multiple images
• After having done the colouring and lighting adjustments in Lightroom import to photoshop for final touches

Photo by @Lalmch via Pixabay

Using Lightroom & Photoshop Together

As you can tell there are advantages to both programs, but for some photographs, you need both programs to complete your image. This is very common for photographers to use both as they are not able to achieve the look they desire through a single program. Combining these programs allows the user to perfect their photo and allows them to process the photo as much as they would like.