Post-processing is an integral part of today’s professional photography. It doesn’t really matter what your branch is, either journalism or artistic photography, you’ll surely end us retouching your photo to some extent. Choosing the right software for post-processing can, therefore, increase your work efficiency, and it’s almost as important as choosing the right camera and lens for the photo.
Where there’s a need, there’s a market, and several companies have put forward their own solution to this problem. One such company is, needless to say, Adobe, with their Photoshop. Even though photographers definitely do use Photoshop, the software isn’t exactly built for the photographers. However, the image editing giant has put forward another piece of software, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, specifically with photographers in mind.
What is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?
In order to explain what Lightroom is, we should first explain what RAW images are. RAW image file is for digital cameras what negatives are for the traditional ones. In essence, RAW file stores information gathered directly from a camera’s image sensor without any digital adjustment whatsoever.
The critical word here is information – RAW files are not images themselves; they are descriptions. Therefore, RAW files cannot be edited in any photo editing software themselves and need to be decoded to be viewed as actual photographs. Because RAW files carry so much information about resolution, dynamic range, and colors, they are much better suited for editing than other image file formats such as JPEG images, for example
This amount of information allows for a lot of flexibility, which means taking control into your own hands. You can manually choose how much contrast, sharpening, noise reduction, saturation, etc., to apply to a photograph you just captured, without allowing your camera to do the same itself.
Now let’s get back to Lightroom. Adobe Lightroom is a RAW converter, that is, a program that decodes RAW files and actually allows you to see the data stored in the RAW file as an image. But, this is not the only functionality of Lightroom, far from it. Besides providing a basic RAW converter functionality, Lightroom has evolved into a post-processing application many photographers will use almost exclusively.
Adobe refined its software to such an extent that now photographers can use it to edit photos without ever having to use other software.
With each new version, Lightroom gains more and more new features. These features allow photographers to use it from start to finish. So if you plan to make a photo album, Lightroom has that functionality. As it’s pretty straightforward and easy to use, Lightroom lets photographers organize, post-process, print, and share photos, all from one place. Lightroom allows its users to quickly manipulate multiple images the same way as you can copy and paste the adjustments to hundreds or even thousands of images simultaneously. Another great feature is non-destructive editing, which keeps the original files intact and allows you to tweak, set, or cancel any adjustments at any time.
Who should use Lightroom?
If you like to capture RAW images and you like the freedom of manipulation, then perhaps Lightroom is the right software for you. If you’re a photographer who strives for professionalism, it’s excellent as it gives you full control. Whatever the subject of the photo may be, Lightroom will surely extract everything from the RAW file and allow you to create a stunning photo. On the downside, Lightroom is not that easy of a software to master, but if you put in the effort, it will very much be worth it.
Lightroom vs. Photoshop
We cannot but compare the two editing programs. In the paragraph above, we’ve said that Lightroom isn’t an easy piece of software to master, but Photoshop is even harder. If you’re new to the Adobe suite, then perhaps Lightroom is the correct tool to get started.
It’s also very important to notice that Lightroom and Photoshop offer much of the same functionalities, with Photoshop having some additional features that are missing from Lightroom. Depending on the kind of photo manipulation that you have in mind (soft editing vs. heavy manipulation), you may want to choose either of the two. Lightroom is best suited for retouching photos, whereas Photoshop allows for heavy image manipulation.
Also, Lightroom is more streamlined for editing a large number of photos at the same time. If you need to edit, for instance, wedding photos, it would be great to use Lightroom’s features to apply all the same edits on all photos simultaneously.
It’s also important to keep in mind that Lightroom doesn’t destroy the original photo when you edit it. Photoshop, on the other hand, does have some destructive capabilities, so if you want to keep the original, it’s best to use Lightroom.
If at this point, you’re thinking about buying one program or the other, we’ll have to tell you here that you really don’t have an option. Adobe doesn’t allow you the option to choose one over the other, so if you want to use any, you have to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud.
If you’re still unsure whether you want to spend any sort of money on a photo editing software, then you should probably try out Adobe Photoshop Elements. This program is essentially a combined light version of both Photoshop and Lightroom – light as in it’s stripped of some of the more advanced features, but it’s still good enough to try out.
Final thoughts
Whether you’re new to photography or an experienced photographer, you know that you need the help of certain programs to extract the best from every photo you take. Adobe Lightroom is precisely one such program, which will allow you to edit RAW photos to your liking. Sure, it might be missing some of the features available in Photoshop, but more often than not, you won’t even need those features. So give Lightroom a try, and we’re sure that you’ll love it. It’s an excellent piece of software that does the job and does it very well.
The post Adobe Lightroom: What is it & What Does It Do first appeared on CSForm.
The post Adobe Lightroom: What is it & What Does It Do appeared first on CSForm.