Adobe Photoshop Vs Lightroom: Compare & Contrast
Adobe Photoshop Vs Lightroom! Feeling strange to hear, right? In many cases, this comparison comes off to photographers and photo editing experts. No doubt, both are excellent applications with a number of useful editing tools and features. Well! Sometimes, it seems confusing to make the comparison between photo editing software for having a lot of similar characteristics. Let it be straight forward. We come with a comprehensive guide to help you regarding this issue.
Well! What do these tools do in real life? Before reaching the technical parts, we need to share some essential things to clarify the basics of these applications. Let’s learn step by step from the definitions, including their advantages and drawbacks.
Introduction to Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the most powerful and popular Raster graphics editor around the world. This application was introduced in the year 1990 by Thomas Knoll and John Knoll under Adobe Inc. Millions of users are doing digital photo editing through this tool for several years. It has been running as a trusted software for its unique and professional characteristics. You can use Adobe Photoshop in both Windows and Mac OS platforms as well.
Features and Advantages of Photoshop
🔹 As a beginner level user, you can easily do photo retouch, restoration, image masking, clipping path, logo design, banner design, color correction, website mockup, etc. using Adobe Photoshop.
🔹 It has the ability to import varieties of images and videos quickly. Also, it provides an easy way to find them.
🔹 Photoshop is the ultimate money and time-saver for your image editing tasks. It lets you do basic and regular editing within a short period and at less price.
🔹 Using Smart Sharpen filter, it enables reducing noise and halo effects of an image.
🔹 It includes the features of choosing multiple shapes and paths at a time.
🔹 Also, it offers conditional actions facility using if/then statements. It works based on logical rules you set up for the actions you want to go with.
🔹 Adobe Photoshop comes with improved 3D tools. It lets you create excellent glow effects, textures, and scene illumination smoothly.
🔹 The presets have been now more intuitive than before. You can work on swatches, patterns, styles, and shapes flexibly.
🔹 To avoid the complex selections, it offers a new object selection tool to make it simpler.
🔹 As it has a huge number of active users with an active community, you will find many resources online from many designers and professionals.
Some Drawbacks of Photoshop
🔹 Photoshop is comparatively hard to learn its interface and functions, especially for the beginners. It requires much time to be compatible with all the tools of the program.
🔹 It is not perfectly suitable for doing batch work with photos.
🔹 Rendering high-quality graphics file is difficult to render in Photoshop. It affects the design process along with the accuracy.
🔹 You won’t get the annual updates like the standard applications.
Introduction to Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom refers to the image manipulation software, developed by Adobe Systems. This program is written in C++ and Lua. Like a standard photo editing tool, it lets you have easy-to-use methods to create photos professionally. As you know, we mentioned the ways of using Lightroom in one of our previous contents. This application helps to speed up the image manipulation workflow along with a lot of possibilities.
You will get more control over the photos than before. All in all, it’s a complete package for photographers and photo experts as well. Lightroom is compatible with Windows and Mac OS systems.
Features and Advantages of Lightroom
🔹 Adobe Lightroom is specially designed for beginner level users who are not familiar with the advanced features of Photoshop.
🔹 It includes presets to save your valuable time while processing photos. Also, it helps to develop the style and achieve consistent looks.
🔹 Another feature of Lightroom comes with its intuitive user interface. Understanding the develop module is quite easier along with the control panel.
🔹 It offers a Quick Develop Panel by which users can batch process to deal with multiple images at a time. As a result, it saves time and increases productivity.
🔹 Lightroom ensures the protection of the original files you are working with. It provides the security and damage-free systems while making any adjustments to your photos.
🔹 This photo editing tool provides the facility to achieve the highest possible quality of an image from the RAW files without losing components.
🔹 It offers an easy way to work with graduated filter, brush, post-crop vignette, and more adjustment tools to have the natural look of the photos.
🔹 Adobe Lightroom is comparatively easy to learn and more straightforward. It is mostly a better option for beginner level users.
Some Drawbacks of Lightroom
🔹 It has comparatively limited editing options.
🔹 There are limitations in sharing and exporting files in Lightroom.
🔹 No facility to add third-party plugins to increase productivity.
🔹 Lightroom has no option to work on layers.
The Ultimate Comparison Between Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
It’s always tricky to find out the best one from several options. And, whether it’s the comparison between the two, it’s really hard. Although, this question has derived a lot of answers on the web already from many professionals. We are going to make it more specific with a table. The only reason is to clear the confusion. So, let’s go through logical explanations to find out the differences between Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.
| Adobe Photoshop | Adobe Lightroom |
|---|---|
| 1. Adobe Photoshop may seem difficult to learn and use for the beginners in the photo editing industry. | 1. Adobe Lightroom is comparatively comfortable to learn for both the beginner or advanced level users. |
| 2. Photoshop allows a limited number of undos to modify or keep the history of image manipulation. | 2. On the other hand, Lightroom gives the facility of unlimited undos with the full history of your actions to images. |
| 3. The minimum requirement of the processor in the Windows system for Photoshop is 1.6GHz with SSE2 support. | 3. It requires a minimum of 2 GHz or faster processor to run Lightroom on Windows platform. |
| 4. It will require a minimum of 5.2GB of available hard-disk space to install Adobe Photoshop. Additionally, it may need 2.4GB of space to download the optional components. | 4. Lightroom needs 2GB of hard-disk space to install this application. |
| 5. Adobe Photoshop is comparatively costly than Lightroom. | 5. Lightroom is affordable compared with Photoshop. |
| 6. The process of sorting out multiple images, including culling, identifying, and editing is a little bit time-consuming in Photoshop. | 6. It takes less time to organize multiple files at a time in Lightroom. That’s why it works a huge time-saver in other words. |
| 7. Photoshop is mostly suitable for digital artists rather than photographers. | 7. Adobe Lightroom is preferable to photographers in most cases. |
| 8. To make complex compositions and adjustments, Photoshop is a better choice. | 8. If you are trying to make simple editing and adjustments, Lightroom can be a good choice. |
| 9. Working with RAW files in Photoshop needs a separate plugin. | 9. It doesn’t require any additional tool to edit the RAW files. |
| 10. Photoshop is a complete package for digital photo artists, where you will find many advanced editing tools. | 10. It cannot work with advanced tools against Photoshop. |
| 11. In photoshop, there is another powerful feature, namely layers. It enables users creating multiple layers to make adjustments more accurately. | 11. Like Photoshop, it has no layer facility. That’s why it takes more time to edit the blending mode. |
| 12. After opening an image, Photoshop cannot display metadata as an overlay. | 12. On the other hand, Lightroom can do it while you edit photos. |
So, Which One Should You Choose?
At last, the battle of Adobe Photoshop vs Lightroom is at the finishing line. As you see, both software has huge importance for different purposes. There is no chance to show less respect for any of them. In some cases, we showed you the benefits of using Adobe Photoshop. And, in other cases, Lightroom has also some advantages over another one.
So, what should you use now for your photo editing job? The answer will be- It depends! Whether you are going to make simple and batch photo editing, Lightroom can be your first choice. On the other hand, to make complex and advanced editing, Photoshop can be your best option indeed.
Finishing Thoughts
Whether we are discussing the battle of Adobe Photoshop vs Lightroom, many things come related to the tools to make the comparison. No doubt, both applications have a lot of advantages with incredible features. But, you have to choose the suitable one according to your photo editing types and complexity levels. Hopefully, you got a clear idea to take a wise decision regarding this matter from this article.
