It’s no secret - I freaking love Lightroom. I love how much you can do in the program, how fast it is for editing your photos, and the whole end to end organisation thing just makes me want to kiss my computer screen.
But that doesn’t mean it can do absolutely everything.
There’s a damn good reason why Adobe bundled both Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC together in their Photography Plan - because when you have access to both programs, you can do absolutely anything you’re little editing heart desires!
That’s why it’s definitely not a choice BETWEEN Lightroom or Photoshop - it’s not an either / or situation, but rather a case of using both for different things.
To give you an idea, although you should probably use Lightroom for around 90- 95% of your edits - because is simply blows Photoshop out of the water when it comes to workflow - there’s definitely times when you’ll want to take an image into Photoshop, either because Lightroom just can’t do the job, or because Photoshop is simply the better program to use for that particular edit.
This generally falls under times when you want to do any PIXEL adjustments - when you want to change the fabric of the photo. There are other times too though - for example, Photoshop’s a far better place to do more targeted or creative adjustments.
So in this post, I’ve come up with 5 main times when I’ll move a photo from Lightroom into Photoshop for editing.
This list is by no means exhaustive - I also use Photoshop for adding text, adding more targeted contrast etc, and others may use it for other things entirely, such as stitching together panoramas or creating composites, but for any child / portrait / lifestyle photographers out there wondering why and when you might want to use BOTH Photoshop and Lightroom, here a few of the most likely contenders!
