Lightroom versus Photoshop’

which is the best editing software

Since i have been doing photography for a long time, things that i use everyday become a reflex and common knowledge. I keep forgeting that nobody is born educated and what seems obvious to me, for a complete beginner isn’t. I have been asked the question, which is the best post editing software to use if you are serious about photography.
I am taking the time today to describe the main differences, advantages and disadvantages for these popular softwares. I will keep it short and sweet and it is not a comprehensive analysis

Adobe Photoshop
1. general description
Complex software with professional tools to modify and edit images. it comes with a lot of features, tools,filters, layers and it can take a lot of time to create outstanding results. You can combine several images into a final result, crop, cut overlay, remove, distort, scale images,
2. purpose
the main purpose of this program is to modify one picture at the time. you can edit images in bulk, but that is complex and it does not have visibility and flexibility. you can record a process that you can apply to more images in bulk, but i would not recommend that for a beginner
3. price
back in the day it used to be thousands of dollars for a license, these days you can purchase a subscription for $30 per month on the adobe website and start using it immediately
4. main advantages
It has all the tools in the world to create the most amazing results. the quality of the outcome will depend on your level of vision, knowledge and expertise but you can go to distances that lightroom cannot go. you can combine more images into one, modify structure
5. constraints
it works with individual images and it saves your work into a psd format that can be quite large. so you need a powerful computer to be able to do that. You can end up with hundreds of MM of data into one file and that is not good. it takes time to learn it and it takes time to work on it

Lightroom
1. general description
a simple image editing software that is also a file management system. it comes with basic editing tools such as brightness, contrast, colour management, cut, crop and many other tools, but you cannot combine more images into one and you are limited how much you can modify the structure of a photograph. it is fast and does not take a lot of space on your hard drive
2. purpose
the main purpose is to manage your photos and edit them. you can work with more photos at the time, and apply modifications in bulk. it is all in front of your eyes and you can edit one image in one click.
3. price – $30 per month from adobe as well. I paid $400 one off payment few years back but today I would be forced into the same adobe subscription model. I believe you can have the entire adobe suite for $50 per month so that will give you both softwares.
4. main advantages
it takes the photos straight form the camera and organises them into libraries
you can apply processes in bulk for hundreds of photos in the same time
it does not save another working file for each image, but one working for an entire library. the original photos will stay untouched and the only thing you save is the working file which if few MB large and it remembers the process you applied for each photo. it is easy to use, easy to learn, has plenty of templates available, and it is basically one click one photo solution
5 constraints.
it cannot work on complex tasks such as removing cutting and combining parts of the picture. it can do light touch ups, such removing a pimple, or blurr it out, but not much more than that.

My recommendations from a photographer perspective
Photoshop if you want to take high quality unique photos, spend a long time and effort to edit and combine tehm into a fine art final result
lightroom if you take many photos, do not have the time to edit individually or modify them more than adjusting exposures, brightness contrast, colours and other parameters.

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