When to Use Photoshop Instead of Lightroom

  I am Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop so I might be a bit biased, and maybe the only Photographer who doesn't like Lightroom hehe. I am not really into Lightroom because you can do everything that Lightroom does, in Photoshop. I always had students asking about it, because they felt intimidated by Photoshop, that's the reason I learned Lightroom. Even the post-production process that everyone loves, you can do all that with Adobe Bridge.

  What I personally do, if I have to do bulk editing for example, is opening my RAW or even JPEG files with Camera Raw, I believe that it's really fast and efficient, unlike Lightroom. You don't even need to open Photoshop properly, you can do your Adjustments, Lens correction even use Adjustment tools anything you might need on Camera Raw, even some spot removal.

  Eventually, if you need more advanced editing you press the button and open the image in your proper Photoshop Interface. You can also do Save as from Camera Raw (batch rename, change resolution etc) without opening your image in Photoshop Interface. Or if you don't want to save it, Ps keeps your editing info in an xml file, exactly like Lightroom does with its editing information files

  So I propose, instead of learning 2 software, you can learn only one and be able to do what both can do.

I would guess that because Lightroom is easier and less complicated, it makes more people choose it, in contrast with Photoshop that looks more complicated. Also, Lightroom's interface reminds kind of darkroom processes and is targeted specially to photographers. Again, not many people use Camera Raw in it's full extend and that's why I guess they will choose Lightroom for simple tasks and Photoshop for more complicated processes.

  I teach for London Graphics Academy if you are interested in either Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom courses, you can learn from experienced Certified Instructors that will answer every question you might have about Image Editing. Or use online courses like lynda.com or anything that might help you to reach the level of proficiency that you wish! Good luck!

For me it's pretty simple: Get is as close to right as you can in Lightroom, and if there's still work to be done, move to Photoshop.

There's a wider perspective to this. These days, people think everything can be fixed in Photoshop. As a result, they shoot carelessly and ultimately end up with unrescuable garbage. Photoshop is probably responsible for more bad photography than anything else.

Focusing on Lightroom rather than Photoshop forces you to tighten up and get the shot right to begin with, and the final result will be that much better.

Bill,

I teach both LR & PS and I use both almost daily. I am a photographer and a designer. Here's my simple answer.

LIGHTROOM

organize, rate, keyword, copyright, file manage, share online, sync to mobile apps, and export jpegs with watermarks

global edits and small amounts of selecting editing

LR edits are almost always good enough for social media sharing

PHOTOSHOP

retouching, compositing, and selective editing

Every image that I print, and frame, and hang in a gallery is edited to some degree with Photoshop

I hope that helps a little.

Hi Bill,

     Just my two cents worth, but here is what triggers me to use photoshop.

     Lightroom is my digital darkroom, its where I choose the how to develop my photo. Just like my old wet process darkroom, choosing the tint of the photo, the saturation/vibrance, highlight and shadows setting are like choosing the type of paper to develop on, but on steroids. I have access to adjust everything I need to to develop the photo. Exposure, dodge and burn, crop, layout, and even size. I can do some minor healing as you would in a darkroom.

     Lightroom is extremely powerful at creating amazing photo's from just one photo, from he basic tools panel to using the Histogram and the tonal curve (one of the most powerful tools in Lightroom I would say). And the HDR function is superb at creating a High Definition image from multiple photo's, as long as you looking to create a realistic image. If someone wants to create a Hyper Realistic image, use a different piece of software.

     If all you want to do is develop amazing photo's Lighting room will be your only tool. But....

     When I choose to use Photoshop, it is when I want to manipulate the photo. As in combining multiple photos for a multiple exposure photo, to build a single photo from 2 or many. For example, I had to build a photo of a "Toast to the Bride". It was in a room that had the back drop of a wall of ceiling to floor windows that over looked a valley in Alaska. Needles to say when I exposed to the people the entire backdrop was blown out. Knowing this, I took a proper exposed photo for the outside and in photoshop placed it the background.

     Other times i use photoshop is when i have to some major healing (removing signs, people, buildings) and I use the content aware feature. Lightroom's healing brush just can't handle it. And then there is just the ability to create a single photo or image from multiple ones with masks, text, gradient colours, etc.

     For me, there are course and books that I have found that tells me how to use Photoshop and what Photoshop can do but, nothing to say when to use it over Lightroom. I make my move to photoshop when I know or find that Lightroom cannot do what I want to accomplish. And from what other has said and told me, thats how they approach it as well.

     I have bought books, purchased online courses and it all helps, but I find if you know what your trying to do, plug that into google and lots of help will show up.

     If you buy books, mark them up! Buy those sticky page tabs things and mark on them what its bookmarking. Online and youtube, bookmark them, and if you can print them off to PDF's and file them

Hope this helps in some way.

Cheers

Jef

You'll probably find that among Lightroom users they will say that they do at least 90% of their work in Lightroom only. Lightroom has  the same raw processing  engine as Camera Raw. So if you are shooting raw images you should probably try to do as much work as possible using Lightroom.  But if you have some intricate spot removal work to be done, or objects removed from the picture, or want to work with different channels of the image, then that is when you would want to turn to Photoshop. I'm sort of a casual photographer. Almost all of my work is done completely in Lightroom. I don't know that there's a course that can tell you when to use one program over the other. It just depends on the image and what you want to do with it.