Lightroom vs Photoshop

After all, what is the best software for photo editing? Lightroom or photoshop?

There are different opinions about it. Even though I started editing about 10 years ago with Photoshop — and I tend to keep the softwares and hardwares I’m used to as it usually saves me time -, nowadays, I can say I use Lightroom more than photoshop, even though in some aspects they have different purposes and characteristics.

I am not an editing expert, but all the skills I gained, I did in Photoshop. When Lightroom came out I didn’t give it much attention. I was happy with Photoshop. But when I started working as a professional photographer about two years ago, I started having a great amount of photos to deliver and since I had heard many people saying it was faster to edit in Lightroom, I decided to download the software and to learn how to use it.

In 2 weeks I could do the basic editing, such as color and light corrections so much faster than I used to do in Photoshop! I loved how easy it was to just paste the settings, to have all the images open and standing one by the other, how I could easily export them all together to any format I wanted, how easily I could create presets and contact sheets to send to my clients and so many other simple features I did not find so easy and fast to do in Photoshop!

From then on, I only used Photoshop for more advanced edition.

I still think Photoshop is so much better for editing skin, getting rid of unwanted elements on the background, creating light or special effects and other advanced photo manipulations.

But from that moment on, I did all the basic editing in Lightroom and, when I wanted some specific and advanced changes or corrections on the photo, then I used Photoshop.

So maybe you are still wondering: what is the best one?

I certainly spend much more time in Lightroom than I do in Photoshop nowadays. If I edit photos from an event, for example: weddings, parties, corporate reunions and things like that, I most likely only use Lightroom with some rare exceptions.

But, when I do portrait sessions or all kinds or product photography, I still spend more time in Photoshop than I do in Lightroom.

The reason for that is, when I photograph events, I usually mainly want to tell a story. It doesn’t matter if there was a car or people in the background, or actually, it does matter, I don’t want to delete them. The people on the background are part of the story. They were there and when someone looks back at that photo, they will be able to remember who else was there that day, what was going on, where they were, if it was packed with cars, if it was full of people, who were these people, if people were laughing, if they were serious, what they were eating, if there were people serving food and so on. I don’t need to clean or create anything. The truth, the story is what matters. Lightroom is perfect for that! I fix the basics, no further adjustments are usually needed.

On the other hand, if I shoot a portrait session, usually what I’m after is something epic.

The best look, the best smile, the best angle and spot and no interferences on that.

I don’t want people in the background. I don’t want a sign on the background. I don’t want trash on the floor.

Of course that is still the truth, but the purpose with these photos is not to show how an environment looked when I went out to shoot. It is to show a specific concept or the person on its best shape in a nice place that had everything to do with what she or he had in mind. That’s it! No distractions! So that’s when I end up using Photoshop! There, I get rid of what doesn’t matter and create whatever is necessary to “complete” what may be missing. May be a sunset, some lights, changes to one side of the background on the photo so it will look symmetrical, skin correction and details like that.

The final conclusion? Know what you are after and test both softwares. You will quickly realize what works perfectly for you.