Adobe creative suite is used by people in the creative industry all over the world and is some of the most-used software around today. It’s estimated that about 90% of all creatives work in Photoshop and many graphic designers, photographers, and editors use a variety of Adobe creative tools to create visual art.

For those just getting started in the field of photography, it can feel like there are many barriers preventing access to Adobe software, including the steep learning curve of mastering Photoshop or the price of each tool on Adobe’s creative cloud platform.

New photographers may wonder whether Photoshop is really worth it or whether the less powerful, cheaper option of Lightroom is just as good in the beginning. When planning your perfect post-production process, it’s important to consider all options. A key part of that is understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the software you’re about to purchase. Photoshop and Lightroom both have their benefits for photo editors but to get the best out of the tools, you need to know both their strengths and limitations.

Photoshop is widely recognized as the most powerful editing software available. Although there are many useful alternatives, Photoshop is pretty much the industry standard. It’s fair to say anybody looking to work professionally as a photographer will need to have some understanding of how Photoshop works.

Originally created as a simple image editing tool, Photoshop has evolved into a massive software with applications for designers and creatives in a number of platforms. From 3D animation to video editing, Photoshop is able to make incredible edits with its wide range of operations. Photoshop is a pixel-level editor that works in layers, meaning that editors have complete control over every aspect of the image and can make changes to different parts of the image separately to create a more realized concept with each photo.

Lightroom was introduced later and joined the creative suite as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom in 2006. The addition of Photoshop in the name shows that this tool was supposed to be closely related to the original but Lightroom tackled some specific issues that many photographers had previously encountered with Photoshop.

Being a workflow-focused software, Lightroom allows photographers to create catalogs of their images and automatically uploads data from the camera to help categorize everything with more detail. It has less editing capabilities but is able to work on a group of images at a time, helping to speed up the process for photographers doing batch edits.

In reality, there is no loser in the battle between Lightroom and Photoshop. Each tool has its own uses and Adobe has designed them to be used in conjunction with each other, hence the name Photoshop Lightroom. Adobe even offers both tools for $10 a month, which is a steal for these two programs. 

For any photographers just starting out in their careers, using both Lightroom and Photoshop together will allow you to take advantage of the positives of both tools. If you are interested in learning more about Photography or Videography, please don’t hesitate to reach out! We’d love to hear from you. You can reach The Burnette Agency by email at info@theburnetteagency.com or give us a call at 404-850-2081.