Are you one of those photographers who complete their entire editing process within Lightroom? Or do you find yourself exporting your images from Lightroom to Photoshop before you’re happy with your edits? Lightroom is definitely worth learning; however, Photoshop is better at many tasks. This is exactly why photographer Mark Denney finds himself bouncing between Lightroom and Photoshop to complete his editing process. Let’s see what it is that makes Photoshop an indispensable part of his workflow even when using Lightroom:
In the video, Denney talks about six core reasons to why he needs to jump over to Photoshop to complete his editing process:
- Better cleanup tools
- Versatile sharpening options
- Convenient Orton effect
- Luminosity masks
- Local contrast
- Focus stacking
It is important to keep in mind that these editing processes may not be something that everyone uses. These reasons that Denney shares are specific to his editing style.
Lightroom is capable of accomplishing these tasks—like Denney demonstrates in the video, Lightroom can almost do everything. But Photoshop seems to be more efficient at the same task and even has greater options and flexibility.
For instance, the “Content Aware” feature in Photoshop is very powerful and does a brilliant job compared to the cloning and healing tools in Lightroom. Similarly, when it comes to sharpening, Photoshop has tons of ways to do so. Moreover, Photoshop also lets you sharpen shadows and highlights individually through its “Smart Sharpen” tool. But options like these are lacking in Lightroom. Denney demonstrates and compares all the other features using both the software in the video.
Only because Lightroom cannot work with multiple photos in the same canvas, doing things like “Focus Stacking” requires an alternative. Otherwise, Lightroom is quite a powerful and feature rich software.
Do you use other software beside Lightroom to complete your editing workflow? Let us know in the comments.
Like This Article?
Don't Miss The Next One!
Join over 100,000 photographers of all experience levels who receive our free photography tips and articles to stay current:
Mark…really enjoy your channel and photo expertise, especially this discussion of Lightroom and Photoshop. I need help because I’m paying Adobe every month for their LR/PS subscription but can’t use their software because some virus or malware wiped away ( greyed out ) icons to open either program. I realize this is an unusual problem, but I can’t get Adobe to respond to emails or get them by phone ?? so I don’t know what to do. Would you have, or any of your other subscribers have any suggestions, man ? Thanks for any assistance, Stephen
PS My website is in a halfway completed state, just for a heads up.