Difference between Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop

Birth of Lightroom & Photoshop

Adobe initially introduced Adobe Photoshop and much later after that it launched Lightroom. The question is as to what made Adobe launch Lightroom? The answer to this question is for quick editing. As the traveling time is decreasing from hours to minutes or seconds, so why to fall behind with editing timing.

Let’s Explore Them

Lightroom vs Photoshop

Both are editing apps and edit photos but that doesn’t mean that they both edit photos the same way. Advanced and more advanced, detailed editing and more detailed editing, less time and more time. That’s the difference between Adobe Lightroom vs Adobe Photoshop. Earlier Lightroom was called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom but later on splitted into different types Lightroom CC, Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Classic. They are not the same. Don’t know what’s best for you when Lightroom is compared with Snapseed and the difference between Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic, you need to see that if you are a true editing enthusiast. With the passage of time, Lr mod APK has also been introduced to make editing easy and advanced in Lightroom Premium without spending a penny.

Lightroom

Lightroom is a catalog based software. If you are editing more than one photo at a time then Lightroom is the best choice for you. Above all, lightroom’s interface is so user-friendly that it was specially designed for quick editing or if you are a photographer and have to deliver the photos to your clients in a hurry, Lightroom is the best choice. But let’s explore whether it’s worth it or not. The feature that makes lightroom unique is its management system of images. Lightroom manages a great amount of images and organizes pics in its library catalog and keywording system to navigate the images.

Curve Editing in Color Grading

You upload photos in your library of Lightroom and think the photos that were captured are dull in brightness, you can go to the cure editing and adjust the brightness.

And if you are a photographer and want to edit a large number of photos( I know it’s quite hectic work), that most of the time happens to the photographer who is either an event or any wedding photographer, worry not! you can apply the same adjustments on all the photos quite seamlessly.

In addition to that there are myriads of presets which can also be applied on all the photos. You can copy the adjustments of the editing and can paste on all the photos. Lightroom classic is considered to be the best among the editing apps in 2024 as it is considered to be the best in color grading or in exposure adjustment or fixing some corrections.

Curve Editing

Color Grading

Exporting in Lightroom

Lightroom has most of the things that one can desire or want in the need of the hour or in casually editing; fulfilling all the necessities. Lightroom Classic can export multiple photos at a time. Although this process can be done in other editing apps as well, that makes Lightroom Classic unique that it is easier to do in Lightroom as it offers quite an easy, intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Adobe Lightroom is considered to be the app which is advanced in features and tools in comparison to other editing apps but when it comes to talk about comparison with Photoshop, Lightroom fails.

Presets- An Easy way of Editing

Where you are provided with the presets with all the ready-made adjustments and also you don’t have to adjust any exposure, sharpness, color etc. in Lightroom Classic, you can not do that in Adobe Photoshop.

Presets Editing in Lightroom vs Photoshop

Lightroom Classic edits a non-destructive photo which means that the raw file will remain intact. And when you Export, you export as a different photo.

Masking & Other Editing Tools

Earlier Lightroom was not introduced with this feature, but when it was, it didn’t have that much accuracy and attractiveness, but now with the passage of time and the updates, it has been enhanced so much that it has aced all the editing apps.

Step 1

Step 2

Photoshop

Photoshop works on layers which is good for avoiding editing on RAW images. Photoshop is recommended when you want to edit in detail. Mostly it is used by professionals like fashion photographers, graphic designers or fine art photographers. For mobile users, it might be interesting for you that Photoshop is available with a different name; Photoshop Express.

The biggest difference between photoshop and lightroom is that photoshop is not catalog based software which means that every photo is edited individually not collectively.

Retouching

Photoshop is a good choice in transforming the look in comparison to Lr. Photoshop is mostly used for transformation and it has amazing transforming tools such as Layers, masking, Re-touching and many more which actually play a vital role in editing images in Ps.

Layers

Although layers are a way to edit non-destructively, still it is quite complicated to manage for some people due to its complex user-interface. But it ensures that your actual image remains intact.

Content-Aware

If you want to remove any person or an object from an image, Photoshop is good to go. Although you can also remove objects in Lr by the Healing Tool, it’s available in the premium version.

In photoshop you have to edit every photo individually which is quite complicated to do so and requires a lot of time. But if you are thinking of doing anything extreme(Advanced), Photoshop is the best choice.

Wide variety Tools

Photoshop is used by and recommended to all those people who are intricate; smoothing out skin, whitening your teeth, removing pimples, or removing any kind of spot from the body/face. A vast variety of tools are mostly used by graphic designers or web designers because they want to focus on the minute details of the picture for which Adobe Photoshop is the best one.

For photo editors, Lr is best but other than photo editing, if you need different shades of canvas then Photoshop is definitely a good choice because Lightroom is just a photo editor.

Masking

It has recently been introduced in Lightroom, but Photoshop already had this feature and people have been getting most of this tool for a long time. What it actually does is it focuses on the specific object selected by the user.

Pros & Cons of Lightroom

Pros

Synchronization with all the devices you are using Lr in.

Although not that much advanced but is still enough.

Non-destructive editing; real image remains safe

Multiple images can be edited at a time

Free presets are available

Quick editing

Cons

Quite disappointing that you can not add text in Lightroom

Not advanced comparatively

Detailed editing can not be done

Pros & Cons of Photoshop

Pros

You can use Clone tool to reduce something.

You can add text on Photoshop

Detail editing makes it unique

Advanced tools and features

Cons

You can not edit non-destructively, but if you want to do so, you have to add layers, which is quite complicated for some people.

Presets are not available; you have to spend a lot of time making a preset.

Mobile app may not possess the same features.

It takes a lot of time in editing even a small thing

You can edit one image at a time

It’s not catalog based

Conclusion

Most of the time it happens that it takes a lot of time and effort in editing each picture in Adobe Photoshop and ends up frustrating people and eventually makes people either stop capturing photos or editing them. Because people think about the hours spent in editing in the future terrifies them. Trying lightroom will make you fall back in love with photography again if you have taken a break from it. But I would suggest you to edit with a combo of both the softwares Photoshop and Lightroom. Although Photoshop is quite hard for a beginner, I would suggest you gradually shift to Photoshop from Lightroom.

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQs)

Professional users use Photoshop for a big transformation but some professionals use Lightroom for quick editing. As earlier mentioned Photoshop requires a lot of time in editing.

Yes, it’s totally worth using Lightroom for beginners. The purpose of the Lightroom is also to provide the beginners with a user-friendly editing app.

Basically, Lightroom can perform amazingly in terms of editing but Photoshop is for Graphic Designers which is quite complex comparatively.

Not really, but if you want advanced features and tools and can spend hours in editing, you can resort to Photoshop.

Lightroom vs Photoshop