Camera Labs

Hello!

Can anyone give a quick and clear explanation of what the main differences are between Photoshop and Lightroom? I understand that Photoshop can do a lot more, so if you already have Photoshop, is there any reason to consider Lightroom? Is there anything that it can do that Photoshop can't? Or is there anything that it does better, or more easily than Photoshop?

To be honest, I have Photoshop, but find it a little intimidating, and thinking that Lightroom might be easier for basic editing..

Photoshop is a far more complete image editing (and creation) application. As far as image editing goes with Lightroom, it basically works on the entire image as opposed to parts of the image. You couldn't use Lightroom to cut out a persons head and stick it on someone else's shoulders, for example. Lightroom is more about the image as a whole and managing the image and all your photographs. Photoshop isn't an image manager. You can't tag or organise your photos in Photoshop.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

... in a nutshell, photoshop is more versatile with post processing... where as lightroom is more of an all-in-one image application with emphasis on user friendly photo management... but lightroom 2.0 (just came out) has a little more editng power than the previous version, but still not as versatile as photoshop... photoshop has a photo management application called 'Adobe Bridge'... i have no experience with it...

... BUT... you can edit photos with photoshop within lightroom... WIN WIN


one big bonus by using lightroom... when you edit a photo, even when editing it with an external editor like photoshop within lightroom, the original image is never changed... it saves the changes as a sort of metadata... you can see the editing, but the original is never changed... and when you export a photo, any editing done to the photo is applied to the export copy... pretty neat!

I'm used to using photoshop, so I vote PS. I didn't like the fact that it saved files/metadata elsewhere and all that extra faff. I never really touch the original, I always make a copy eith *edited* on the end, or whatever. Lightroom looks like more of a library with photo editing tool to boot, I don't bother with tagging, or photo library software, so that's probably why I don't like using lightroom. Call me backward, but I'm used to doing it this way. Maybe in a few years time I'll regret not having made tags, but hey ho.

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Nikon D700, Nikon D80, Micro Nikkor 105 f2.8 AI-S,Nikon 85mm 1.8D, Nikon 50mm 1.8D, Nikon 35mm F2D, Nikon 16-35 f4 VR, Nikon 24-70mm F2.8 AF-S, Nikon 70-200VRII, Nikon 70-300mm VR, 300mm f2.8 AI IF ED, SB-800, SB-900. Noiseware pro,NIK Dfine, Nik Colour Effex, Nik Sharpener Pro