A few days ago I was up at Nottingham & Notts Camera club, I was asked to do a talk on some workflow stuff. The main focus was on the differences between Photoshop and Lightroom.

It’s a little old now – as it was written in 2013 – but this blog has a great summery of the Lightroom V’s Photoshop thing – click here. The blog post pretty much covers the basics – Lightroom can do pretty much everything you would ever need to do to a photograph regarding photography or photographic principals.  When you get into the realm of digital manipulations or details pixel level editing – this is where moving the files from LR to PS might be a good idea.

We starter out by looking at the wider workflow I use ( more info on that here ) from the capture stage all the way though to my blog and back again.

Lightroom & Photoshop are different programs, build from the ground up to do different things. All though there is a vast amount of cross over for us as photographers – It is worth remembering that Photoshop is built for wide range of users where as Lightroom is built just for us.

Photoshop is known for being very powerful, yet complex to learn yet Lightroom is closing the gap on the amount of functionality and range of tool for the photographer too.  Below are some examples of images in the raw camera file, after LR & after PS.

So which program should you use ?

There is no right or wrong answer here, I would encourage people to use the workflow that suits you the best, but knowing if you could work faster, smarter and better streamlined is always worth a thought.  Below I have added some images from part of the slide show looking at the pro’s and con’s of each tool.

I would like to also draw attention to the PSD file. It really is a super amazing file format and the bedrock of the Adobe workflow. The concept of the PSD file is backed up by the concept of a ‘non-destructive’ workflow that Photoshop can provide – giving you maximum control, flexibility and ease of workflow

If you want to check out more about my retouching – check out this link –

Here are a few links to help you find some of the stuff mentioned in this blog post, also remember to sign up for the newsletter which can be found here.