Photoshop Vs Lightroom

By Jennifer | Jun 19 2007 |

For a long time now Photoshop has been THE image editing program for rasterised or pixel based images. With each new version of the program we have seen superb advances and wonderful tools which improve the workflow of the many different types of Photoshop user – from graphic and web designers to special effects technicians and illustrators.

Personally, I love Photoshop and I use it every single day either for my design work or for editing my photographs. However, the program has become more and more complex as it becomes all things to all people. What began life as an image editing program for single images has now become a huge beast of a thing. It is now in version 10 (Photoshop CS 3). If you’ve been using Photoshop for the last few years, many of it’s tools will have become second nature. However, if you are just joining in the fun now, there really is a very steep learning curve.

Now we have Adobe Lightroom and things have become a little bit simpler. Lightroom is aimed directly at Photographers and although, I’ve only been using it for a couple of months, I can say that Lightroom could be considered an ideal solution for users who want to do a little bit of editing on their images, without have to learn the many tools in the Photoshop toolbox. The powerful image processor and image database in Lightroom is designed to emulate the typical workflow of a photographer.

Lightroom is a brand new program, we’re on version 1 now, and it was designed with very specific needs in mind and tested by the general public for several months as a free downloadable beta version.

One of the major differences between the programs is how they deal with image adjustments. In Photoshop, when you apply more than one adjustment, the image is increasingly degraded with each consecutive change. In Lightroom, you can make as many changes to the image as you want, but it is only when you save your image as a PSD, JPEG or TIFF that a final, single adjustment is applied.

Another big difference is how the interface looks. The new program has a stylish, dark grey workspace broken down into 5 modules. It’s easy to move around the program and there are far fewer tools and sections to get your head around.

The program is incredibly efficient and allows the photographer to take in large folders of images, make adjustments and quickly produce contact sheets, a web gallery or setup printing options.

Realistically, I don’t believe it will come down to an “either, or” situation. Lightroom is certainly a standalone program but it is also tightly integrated with Photoshop. For many photographers, Lightroom should offer all of the image management and processing capability that they’ll need. For other’s, Photoshop with it’s highly developed capabilities is the only choice. That’s the important thing, it’s all about choice.

If you liked this post, please share it:

Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Lightroom

Comments

6 Responses to “Photoshop Vs Lightroom”

Paul Enderson on June 19th, 2007 10:16 am

I played with Lightroom during the early beta trials, and it really sucked! Fortunately, by the time it was released Adobe had sorted it out…

You’ve nailed it above though: it’s a great focused photo-editing tool, useable in conjunction with Photoshop.

Mind you, once Adobe start growing the feature set (which they will) then perhaps we’ll see a ‘dark’ Photoshop?
alex leong on June 19th, 2007 1:38 pm

I’ve been considering this program for some time. Is the beta version still available anywhere?
Nice review!

Alex
jennyrusks on June 19th, 2007 2:13 pm

Hi Paul, yep, I think that Adobe really have sorted it out very well. I can feel myself being pulled very strongly towards the lightroom …

Thanks Alex. The beta version is gone but you can get a 30 day trial here - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/
Thomas on June 19th, 2007 3:29 pm

I really love Lightroom and load all my raw files in there first. Like the layout much more than adobe camera raw.

But most photos need a little visit in PS for filters lite noise reduction and sharpening
jennyrusks on June 19th, 2007 3:41 pm

Thomas, I love the layout too. It seems nice and compact yet not too squashed. And I agree, I’ll always be back and forth between the two programs. Would get the shakes if I didn’t use PS on a daily basis!
Web Design Melbourne on February 17th, 2008 11:03 am

I have been using Lightroom since the beta release and I think it is a great tool. Very limited compared to Photoshop (which I love deeply), but simply calling it a raw file converter, or an image processing program, would miss the fact that Lightroom also is designed for sorting, cataloging, presenting and printing ones files.I consider it a must-have for any digital photographer.