All the adjustment sliders found in Adobe Camera Raw standalone can be found in Lr, too, so you’re not missing anything if you choose to use it. Lightroom is a photo editor that automatically renders Raw files and offers lens corrections to boot.

While Camera Raw works just fine with the Raw format, it adds a separate step to your workflow that isn’t really needed. Photoshop doesn’t have its own Raw file engine and needs to open a separate window with Adobe Camera Raw to work with Raw files. Metadata is especially important in web design and SEO, and being able to use presets to automatically add metadata is a huge time saver.Ĭollections and Smart Collections in Lightroom are designed to make managing and accessing your photos quick and easy, and Photoshop has no capabilities to handle multiple images in this way. Sure, you could use Adobe Bridge instead, but Lightroom is far superior – see Adobe Bridge vs Lightroom.Īdobe Lightroom also provides everything you could ever need from an image editor in terms of metadata, keywording, and searching. If you use multiple catalogs, you can select “Prompt me when starting Lightroom,” which will automatically allow you to open exactly those photos that you need.Īdobe Photoshop has no such abilities, let alone Photoshop Elements.

One source of confusion for beginners using Lightroom is the folder structure, which references your computer’s hard drive, but doesn’t track changes made outside of Lightroom – this can cause ‘missing images’, crashing, or other Lightroom related problems. You can forget about storing your images in folders and subfolders and forgetting where they are. Lightroom’s database and catalog system allow photographers to keep all their images organized. Photoshop is made for exceptionally powerful image manipulation and edits, although you may need a powerful computer to handle large PSD files – see the best laptops for Photoshop.īut how do these differences play out on a practical level? By using Lightroom, you’ll be able to make edits to just about any image file in no time. Lightroom is a photo editor made for a photographer’s workflow and efficient editing of your photos. The biggest difference between the two programs is what they are designed for.

Photoshop lightroom