Lightroom vs. Photoshop
Lightroom vs. Photoshop?
“Do I need to buy both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS4?” Digital photographers ask me this question whenever I give lectures or lead workshops on either program. It’s a good question and one that deserves more than just a simple yes or no answer.
Each program has it’s own strengths, and although the two programs share some common features, they are not competitors. By design, each program fills it’s own unique niche.
Photoshop is the world’s leading pixel manipulator. There is no other program like it for complete control over the look and feel of your digital image. No other program offers the same level of local image repair or allows such artistic creativity. If you can dream it Photoshop can make it happen!
Photoshop rocks, but it is not an organizer of digital images. Photoshop is useless when you need to find your favorite images. Searching, sorting, and organizing are not part of its capabilities. These are Lightroom’s strengths.
Not only can Lightroom help you organize all of your files but it can also help you manage the whole digital imaging workflow. Lightroom is designed to help you from start to finish. You get the most bang for your buck once you learn to use Lightroom to empty your memory card, to sort through your files, to set your initial raw file conversion, and to push the finished product over out to the web or to your printer. Lightroom handles the whole chain of events with speed and grace whereas Photoshop really only functions as an image enhancer.
See the Adobe engineers never meant for one program to replace the other. For someone like me, who needs help both finding and enhancing my files, both program are essential. Knowing how to use them together is even better!
For more on what Lightroom does and how it interacts with Photoshop please click here.
Filed Under: Getting Started • Workflow • Working with Photoshop
About the Author: David’s sports and landscape images are often used on the web and in outdoor sports publications. He has an extensive knowledge of digital photography and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. David is a talented instructor and his entertaining teaching style works for students of all skill levels.
In 2009, David Marx led digital photography programs for the 
All good points, David. I get this same question all the time, too. I’d like to add another perspective, from my own experience.
Since the early 1990s I’ve used Photoshop for editing/processing photos. Since Lightroom’s emergence, I now do probably 90% of all my photo work in Lightroom. The remaining 10% is only for specific situations requiring more than what Lightroom can do.
In my work, Photoshop (or Elements etc.) is still required for these situations:
1. Blending multiple images. If you need to merge exposures, make a panorama, or otherwise composite more than one photo together, you still need to do that outside Lightroom.
2. Heavy retouching. If you need to replace a section of dead, brown grass with a patch of green grass, remove a reflection from within a window, or other kinds of complex retouching, you need to do it in Photoshop.
3. Advanced processing and special effects. There are countless image processing plug-ins on the market for doing specialized processing in Photoshop. For example, if your image needs sophisticated noise reduction, you can use the Noiseware plug-in with Photoshop to do a much better job or noise removal than Lightroom can do. And, many people are really getting into the plug-ins from Nik, like Viveza and SilverFX. (Although these are also starting to be available as Lightroom plug-ins too.)
The bottom line is that Photoshop still reigns for heavy-duty, pixel-level processing, on an image-by-image basis.
That said, the more you use Lightroom, the less you’ll need Photoshop. I’ve found that using Lightroom encourages me to work harder to get shots right in the camera. Composition, cropping, exposure, etc. If you really nail it in the camera, your Lightroom workflow becomes super-easy and fast, and you can do everything you need right within Lightroom.
And even if you own Lightroom and Photoshop, I recommend you really work hard to do as much as you can in Lighroom before ever considering going into Photoshop.
In this way, I think Lightroom does compete with the comparatively clumsy combination of Bridge/ACR/Photoshop. For folks just getting into digital photography, or more experienced shooters who want to really simplify and streamline their workflows, Lightroom will often be the only software they need.
In my case, as a photography “amateur” -so certainly not Pro- my winning couple is LR2 + Pixelmator.
Thanks for this.
Just wanted to add that I think LR is far more than just an organizer. I do 95% of my edits in LR, saving myself an unbelievable amount of time, energy, and disk space. Then, for images that need more work, I open just those up in Photoshop. I don’t think I could give up either one!
Thanks to all here for your excellent comments. I didn’t mean to imply that Lightroom is “just an organizer.” Like you Nat, I do 90% of my work in Lightroom too because;
a: Lightroom is non-destructive.
b: Lightroom is faster and more efficient than Photoshop.
c: Lightroom is a workflow program. I love the way that it carries me from import to image enhancement and then off to print, email, and the web. Photoshop has more options but without a lot of training its really hard to take a raw file process it, save an appropriate sized copy, and upload it to a site like Flickr. With Lightroom this flow from image ingestion to photo-sharing is a snap.
My point in this post though was to highlight the things that are completely unique in each program. For Lightroom thats the image database and for Photoshop its the power of layer masks and the creativity of compositing multiple images together plus all of the filters.
Thanks again and please keep those excellent comments going.
–
David
Thank you for the clarity of the products from a users point of view. My reading of the official Adobe literature would not have brought out how they were different.
The process of a complete new computer system for me to use is daunting. My main interest is panoramic photo stitching and actual paper printing. It is my view that what you see on the computer means nothing until it is printed.
The computer I have is a 12 year old pentium 2, 500 mgz, with a 20 gig hard drive. And utilizing photoshop 4, Elements 2 (that came with my Canon 300D), and PTgui 6.3. However I could only work in 8 bit images. Sigh. My old workhorse cost me $100 or less than $1 a month but not including actual electrical charges for it constant operation. What it all means is I could only stitch 4 photos together due to the 1.1 gig on the file memory cap.
So I now have a HP, 64 bit, 8 gigs and a quad core, with a 750 and 500 gig hard drives. The software upgrades will be immensly helpful and time saving. God, stitching in seconds rather than 10 to 15 minutes per stitch
Lightroom was the obvious choice for photo handling. Just add the top end PTgui in 64 bit and I will be having loads of fun again. Though some of the plugins will be acquired as I can afford them. Would the current Elements compliment Lightroom and be a good substitute over the full photoshop?
The goal with this new computer is to be able to develop vastly better images along the approach of George Dewolf for fine art photo printing. Hmmm, maybe I should learn how to shoot better pictures
The future is looking exciting for me again.
CHEERS…Mathew
Dear Mathew Hargreaves,
Sorry about the delay and thanks for the kind words. I too feel like the Adobe product descriptions fail to highlight the crucial difference here which is that Lightroom is a digital asset management and workflow tool whereas Photoshop is the world’s most powerful single image enhancer.
For your needs, I think that Photoshop Elements is an excellent choice and it plays very well with Lightroom. I think that the Lightroom + Elements combo is a very good use for your money. In all honesty I think that most photographers, even a lot of the professionals that I teach, would be perfectly happy with Lightroom and Elements. The Photoshop CS4 (soon to be CS5) is way more powerful but very few photographers ever need or utilize its full potential.
On a separate note, have you seen the new George DeWolfe’s Digital Photography Fine Print Workshop book? I am not a print master but I sure enjoyed reading it and assisting some of his classes.
best wishes with the new computer,
David
Hi David,
Thank you for the reply. Your opinion is very helpful. I will then go after the 64 bit versions of the softwares as I can afford them. Priority will be the Elements upgrade so I can work in 16 bit. I will wait for Lightroom 3 due around the end of April. My Mitsubishi Diamond Pro will have to suffice for a while. I have been doing a lot of reading on monitors and have decided it will be a NEC higher end model or the DreamColor.
The issue for me is a monitor that actually displays the image as it should be seen. Since most do not do this, the advantages will be control of the color for printing. I am also doing some IR panoramic stitching but the noise in IR is a pain to deal with. Visual control will be nice.
I have noticed the photographic field is especially weak on Monitor reviews. These are so critical and yet there is damn little available out on the web. It is surprising how little this is discussed even in the photography forums and the related social groups.
So did you have fun working with Mr. Dewolf? IT is his book what is driving the component upgrade. I found the book at the University of Washington bookstore about a year and a half back. BTW, the book is not new, I think it is from 2006, unless you are talking about an updated edition. It has a lot of great information and the approach to image processing. I found a couple key facts buried in the book that would have better displayed up front. the use of good images showing his adjustements visually were better than most books. Last year when I was looking to do the upgrade then, I checked with Reindeer Graphics to see if they had a 64 bit version of Optipix. At the time they did not but maybe they have done it now.
I was out on one photo stitching site and found it interesting that people had not really found a way to make money from their images on the web. I suggested hitting the galleries and seeing if their images were a fit. Not to mention the possibilities of catering to the tourist trade, that is, with postcards, smaller prints in mats or rolled in carboard tubes. Cost wise for the market, is it cheaper to print your own or do it in bulk through Costco? I do not have the type of printer that would do larger prints for framing. For myself I use Moonphoto in Seattle. For everyone else I have used Costco. The issue for me is paper choice. I prefer a satin or semigloss finish, not gloss or lustre. I do as much as I can with as little as on hand.
CHEERS…Mathew Hargreaves
I have been using Photoshop since V3 but the more fluent I become in Lightroom the less I do in PS. I wish that LR would let me keep the image at 100% when I want to use the angle tool to straighten an horizon. (Can’t remember if I have checked that in LR3).
Good comparison between Lightroom and Photoshop, however where does Adobe Bridge fit into the mix?
Thanks
Dear Tom,
I liked your question on how the Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom differ so much that it turned my answer into another post. You can read all about it here.
http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/02/adobe-photoshop-lightroom-vs-the-adobe-bridge/
–
David
[...] This article is a follow-up to a recent post on how Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom differ. [...]