I have lightroom 5.3 and my question is, what exactly is the difference, if there is a difference, between photoshop and lightroom? Up until I got involved with this forum, I never really tried that hard to make great photographs. So I didn't edit. I shot and I uploaded.

But the caliber of photographers on this forum made me really wanna step my game up, so I decided to get an editing tool for my computer. And I also figured that since I basically just read a ton of books, and different online pages, and watched videos to teach myself to use my camera and how to shoot in different settings, and lighting, and environments.

I thought I could just teach myself to learn how to edit my photographs, and don't get me wrong I think I do okay, but I am nowhere near as advanced as some of you guys and I really would like to be. I'd like for you all to be stoked when you see a set uploaded from me. Sorry for the novel but where I'm going is, I have kinda figured out lightroom to an extent, but does photoshop offer any more advanced editing tools?

Or are there better editing tools that blow PS and LR outta the water? I'm really just looking for insight from some of the serious photogs that are on here. I know that editing doesn't make the shot, but I've seen a few on here that I could have made the same shot, but the production left me in the dust.

Any info or insight would be appreciated. Just trying to improve my work for myself, and for those of you that will see the images I upload in the future.

Thanks for any input. Again sorry for the novel. I'm sure I'm gonna catch some shit from a few people that hate reading this shit, but I always feel the need to fully explain myself.

I can't speak for the more professional photographers, only my own opinion:

Photoshop is more for preparing the image for the final product. You can cut/paste, resize, remove unwanted details, add text. You may also find online plugins which can be installed that will enhance your photos.

Lightroom is more for the post-production after you've got the image looking the way you'd like. That is, the visual details are as you'd like them and now you want to play with the image as it stands. From here you can bring out the colours, crispen the image, add a vignette, darken the sky, to name just a few of the hundreds of effects.

I'd suggest grabbing some of the better plugins for Lightroom. I believe it was UER member Zoth who once sent me a package of filters some years back which I use to this day. I could provide these if you want to shoot me a PM.

Photoshop also allows you to create HDR images but I find that Photomatix works considerably better - should you prefer to bracket your photos.

So you reckon I oughta go ahead and get photoshop also for the pre editing stages before sending it on to lightroom to finish it off? That explains some...like why, even though I'm not a fan of hdr, why I couldn't find the tools to do it. That actually helps a lot. Thanks for the time and information. It was much needed.

I'm just trying to move my photography up to the next level. And any input on my shooting style, the way I compose my shots, lighting, and editing, would be extremely appreciated.

Again thanks a lot!

I use the suite of 3 products by DXO - including Optics Pro (instead of Lightroom). I like the science behind what they do.

KEv

I'm a huge fan of Lightroom. The nicest thing about it, is even a long time later, you can revert your changes back to how they were.

Photoshop is for more advanced photo editing; Lightroom is a digital darkroom.

Posted by BackSeatKiller So you reckon I oughta go ahead and get photoshop also for the pre editing stages before sending it on to lightroom to finish it off? That explains some...like why, even though I'm not a fan of hdr, why I couldn't find the tools to do it. That actually helps a lot. Thanks for the time and information. It was much needed.

I wouldn't recommend getting Photoshop right now. Try watching tutorials or maybe even take a class in Lightroom before you go there. Lightroom can give you amazing results of enhancing your photos alone, but if you feel you want to take your editing to the next level (like removing unwanted details and cloning), learn Photoshop. Most people I know use Lightroom THEN Photoshop, so that's just the order it makes sense for me to learn them.

Also, if you want to edit your photos in Lightroom, I strongly suggest shooting RAW on your camera.

Lightroom is far better at workflow, file management and has all the tools I almost ever need to process my photographs in a simple layout that doesn't take long to learn and become efficient at. You can do everything in Photoshop that is possible in Lightroom, I just find Lightroom 100 times easier to use. Conversely, not everything in Photoshop is found in Lightroom. Not by a long shot. Photoshop is almost infinitely capable of doing anything you could ever imagine to an image. With this infinite capability, comes complexity.

Lightroom has these great features: Native RAW file handling, file management, digital negatives (DNG format) which keeps all your settings in a meta layer permanently with the image, and is reversible. It has all the typical photography centric adjustments in an easy to use layout with sliders and you can watch the changes happen real-time on the photo. You don't have to navigate through a complex set of menus to pull up each function. They're all there on the right hand side of LR.

Here's what I use photoshop for:
1. magic healing brush: image correction such as removing spots, pimples, or some anomaly from my image. PS seems much better at this than LR.
2. combining two exposures using layers (rarely used)
3. stacking images for star trails (rarely used)
4. perspective cropping (better tools than LR, but WAY more difficult for me to use.

I've recently found several great plugins for LR, thanks to Siper's help:
HDR:
Enfuse plugin. This is donate-ware and does very subtle exposure/focus stacking HDR work but has almost no controls available to affect the outcome. That's OK, because I never seem to need to control it to get what I want, and I never get clown-vomit.

Google Nik Collection:
This is an amazing collection of tools that has taken my post work to the next level. I don't understand how it integrates with LR exactly but I launch it from LR and it re-imports the modified TIFF back into LR automatically. It also plugs into PS but I only use it out of LR.

Here's my basic workflow:
1. Import my RAW files as DNG in LR and save down to year specific, location specific folder. Add tags, etc.
2. Tweak many settings in LR until my basic look and feel are accomplished
3. Launch Google Nik plugins and mess around with contrast, color correction, white neutralization, remove color cast, etc. Save out as TIFF.
4. Launch Dfine Nik Pluging for Noise Reduction if necessary.
5. Export to JPG

For HDR work it's more complicated:
1. same as above.
2. same as above. then copy and paste settings to all files in the HDR stack. Review each image in stack for highlights, shadows etc
3. select all in HDR stack and run Enfuse Plugin
4. Re-edit imported HDR TIFF file in LR
5. Run Nik plug-ins and rework contrast related stuff
6. run noise reduction or just export to JPG

Example of a subtly processed 6 exposure HDR image using LR, Enfuse, Nik Color Efx Pro, Nik Silver Efx Pro. No PS used on this image:


Hope that helps. I suggest sticking with LR. Most all pro photogs I know don't use PS much at all.
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I've tried to find what's the difference between Lightroom and Photoshop RAW (which really is just the built in way Photoshop edits RAW photos) and it looks like they're pretty much the same . . . but Photoshop can do more manipulating along with coloring if I'm thinking correctly.

So I might be the only one still using the oldschool combo of Photoshop (Camera Raw mostly) and Bridge. I've tried Lightroom once but I figured that the combo of Photoshop and Bridge are practically what Lightroom is, but with more control and less interference. I've always preferred to handle the organizing myself in the pc's file explorer, so the software taking that out of my hands was a no-go.

I bet that as a beginner you can't go wrong with Lightroom! But I think you will need Photoshop sooner or later anyway. Maybe see if you can find a package deal of the two somewhere.

Lightroom is aimed at photographers, photoshop is aimed at digital artists. Both will do almost the same exact thing for your photos in the long run, with just different steps to get there.

I used Photoshop prior to Lightroom being invented so I stuck around with it for the long haul.

The best tip you can get for post processing is to make the image as close to the look you want in camera.

Picture yourself looking at your image in 20 years and seeing if you still like it.

I accomplish most of what I need in camera. I spend a few minutes in Light Room for the final touches. I use photoshop to stitch panoramas and do multiple clone shots of myself in a single frame.

I would rather spend more time shooting than processing, as for hdr...I tried it, I find it unnatural so I don't use it any more.

Wow thanks a lot all that info was useful for what I need