What’s The Difference between Lightroom and Photoshop?
Many apps are in the photo and video editing niche, like Lightroom and Photoshop. Adobe powers both Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, the main components of the Adobe Creative Cloud Plan.
These apps have been unbeatable in photo editing for the last ten years. Let’s dive deep and explore the critical difference between Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop and which one is better in 2024
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a famous and fantastic computer and desktop software developed for editing and enhancing all types of images and performing Graphic designing. Professional photographers and designers mainly use Photoshop to edit their pictures and bring stunning looks to their art.
Photoshop’s other name is Photoshop Express, and it is available for mobile users just like the Lightroom mobile app. Photoshop is very popular among professional and next-level graphic designers, and it has a set of more advanced tools than Lightroom.
Lightroom Mobile
Lightroom Mobile is a top-rated, user-friendly, categorize-based app designed to arrange and improve digital images. In the beginning, it was known as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
It has different versions, including Lightroom CC, Lightroom PC, Mobile, and Lightroom Classic. Lightroom is also available for photo editing on Windows and iOS devices. Lightroom has limited use in graphic design. You can also read my article “Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic” here.
Features of Adobe Photoshop
Here are some unique features of Adobe Photoshop; let’s discuss them in detail to clarify the concepts of editing with Adobe Photoshop.
Graphic Design Capacity
Adobe Photoshop provides advanced graphic designing tools that Adobe Lightroom does not support. These tools are accurate and unique to Photoshop, which makes Photoshop more popular among professional photographers and graphic designers.
So, whenever you’re stuck in the selection of Lightroom or Photoshop, prefer Photoshop if you are a professional graphic designer and thinking about something big in the editing field.
Vector Shapes: Photoshop allows you to make and edit vector shapes that can be modified in size and shape alignment without losing quality. It’s a perfect and unique idea and concept for branded and untapped logos, icons, and illustrations creation.
Text Editing: You can modify, enhance, decorate, and style text in various fonts and effects. This particular feature is unique and powerful for creating customized text. Photoshop lets you edit and format text in different styles. You can make text with different font sizes and colors.
Advanced Drawing Tools: Photoshop offers many drawing tool sets, such as brushes and pencils, to create well-designed digital artwork and illustrations. These tools of Photoshop are helpful for those who are new to Photoshop and love unique and professional artwork.
Accurate Retouching Tools
In terms of tools, Adobe Photoshop has some stunning and advanced photo editing and retouching tools. Due to these premium features, Photoshop is the right option if you are a professional photographer and editor. These tools help you in getting accurate control over your editing.
Clone Stamp Tool: If you want to duplicate or replicate parts or sections of an image, then the Clone Stamp Tool is more helpful to you. This tool is also useful for the removal of distractions.
Healing Brush Tool: Photoshop: lets you remove all faults and flaws and make your design a unique version. With the help of Healing Brush Tool, removing any spooky mark or pimple is a piece of cake for professional photographers and editors.
Content-Aware Fill: The process of seamlessly removing unwanted elements from an image or filling in missing areas is called Content-Area Fill. This tool is handy and perfect for generating auto-replacements for removed objects.
Layer-Wise Editing
The Layer system of Photoshop allows you to work on different sections and parts of an image freely. You can hide, organize, arrange, and adjust individual layers easily. Layer-based editing is the favorite tool for professional users, giving them complete control over the flow of editing. Layer-based editing lets you edit and adjust specific properties like brightness, color, blind mode, and contract non-destructively.
Here are the key points of how layer-based editing works
- Understanding layers
- Layers stack
- Non- destructive editing
- Opacity and blind mode
- Layer masks
- Smart objects
- Grouping layers
The key points above determine how layers are balanced with each other to create unique results. That’s why people prefer Photoshop over Lightroom.
Features of Lightroom
As you know, every app has some advanced or different features that are absent from their competitors. So, Adobe Lightroom also has unique features that make it different from other apps.
 Photo Organization and File HandlingÂ
Lightroom uses catalogs to organize and arrange photo albums perfectly, making it easy for users to search for photos. Catalog is the best and quickest way to search albums or single images immediately when you need photos.
But the main point is, what is a catalog?
It is a database containing or keeping all records about photos. When you edit an image, the main image remains unchanged, but the changes you made are stored in the database.
On the other hand, photoshop edits original photos. Creating a catalog in Photoshop is quite a different and challenging task. You have to make a separate PSD file for this.
Innovative And Advanced Photo Search
We can create photo or image collections in Lightroom using intelligent and advanced photo search. They make it easy for users to find and approach unique sets of images without going through all of your pictures. They keep your workflow easy and quick and your photos organized in Lightroom.
Suppose you create a collection of your visit to the “U.K. images” and add all U.K. trip images to it. Now, it’s easy and smooth for you to search for your pictures without any waste of time. This is only possible with the help of intelligent search.
Batch Editing
Lightroom allows you to edit more than one or multiple images simultaneously. This process saves you valuable time. This is called batch editing, which makes Adobe Lightroom superior to Adobe Photoshop.
Now, editing hundreds of photos in just a few seconds is a piece of cake if you know about batch editing in Lightroom. For example, if you want to change all images’ backgrounds to the same look, this will be done in batch editing. you can also download Lightroom MOD APK over here.
Lightroom vs Photoshop: Pricing
When we talk about Lightroom and Photoshop, discussing the price difference between them is compulsory. The good thing is that all the Adobe software provides a 7-day free trial for new users. But the actual price is quite expensive. If you want or dream of high-quality work, you must pay more for value addition.
Comparatively, Lightroom is much less expensive and budget-friendly than Photoshop. However, Adobe has different plans and sets prices for each, like Adobe Photography and Creative Cloud plans. You have to spend 9.99$ each month to buy them individually.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop: User Interface
Lightroom has a spotless and fresh user interface as compared to Photoshop. This prime and unique feature makes Lightroom easy and intelligent to manage, arrange, and organize workflow.
Lightroom also has a smoother and more user-friendly editing workspace than Photoshop. This is all due to Lightroom’s simple sliders. For example, you must adjust the Slider option, which is available if you want to change the background images in batch editing.
On the other hand, Photoshop has a very complex user interface. Every tool in Photoshop contains a set of alternatives, which makes it more straightforward for users. Photoshop is undoubtedly advanced and offers more options, but it is tricky to use these tools.
The endpoint is that Photoshop needs to improve its user interface and editing workflow. The Photoshop interface consists of different parts that make your results outstanding.
Here is a breakdown of parts of the Photoshop interface.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Learning Curve
As I mentioned above, Lightroom provides a smooth and clean user interface. No one needs deep or advanced skills to use Lightroom. Due to the low complexity of the interface, Lightroom is the best editing app for new users.
Let’s start with Lightroom’s straightforward interface and then move on to an advanced editing app like Photoshop, having a complex user interface.
On the other hand, the tools in Photoshop take a longer time than usual to learn and understand. Photoshop tools are further classified into more options; sometimes, it’s more confusing to users.
No doubt, you get prime and accurate control of your image editing using Photoshop. However, the learning curve is steeper for those new to photo editing. The editing with layer-based having more complexity made Photoshop more steeper to learn.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Editing Capacity
Photoshop has a more advanced and valuable photo editing capacity than Lightroom. Photoshop also provides its users with graphic design options. The 100 Doller’s question is, why do we need Lightroom or Photoshop to offer such unique and advanced editing capabilities?
The one-line answer is that Adobe felt there was a need for a tool to provide photo editing in a simple and smooth format. So, back in 2006, Adobe released Lightroom, which mainly targets photography.
Lightroom provides all photo editing tools in a simple and accessible format without any advanced training in these tools. Both new and professional photographers can easily edit and organize their images. On the other hand, Batch editing is a God-given tool for photographers by Adobe!
Photoshop was not made for photographers. The interface of Photoshop could be more user-friendly and easy to use. People must use ACR in Photoshop to do basic editing, like in Lightroom. However, tools like layer-based editing are also unique tools for professional photographers.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop: Action and Presets
Photoshop provides “Action.” These actions are the same as the recorded recipe we use in Photoshop to implement on one or multiple photos step by step. For example, retouching and color correction.
On the other hand, Lightroom provides a series of presets, called pre-adjusted formats or layouts from famous photographers, that we can apply to our images.
Like Nature presets and Street Presets. To read more about Lightroom presets, read my article about Lightroom presets.
Pros and Cons of Photoshop
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Cons
Pros and Cons of Lightroom
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Cons
Conclusion
If you are a professional graphic designer and want to make your work more optimized and fancy, go with Photoshop. Or, if you wish to arrange images and make simple edits to your pictures, use Lightroom. Let’s start with Lightroom and then move on to Photoshop for advanced editing using tools like layer-based editing. I’ve been using both tools for the last three years. Now the ball is in your court; let’s see what you choose.
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