Have you heard of the program Lightroom but aren’t exactly sure what it is or more important, should you be using it? By the end of this quick article you’ll see just how powerful Lightroom is as I share with you 25 reasons you should be use Lightroom!
While some photographers still prefer editing their images using Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom is a perfect option to work hand in hand with Photoshop. Many photographers find it much simpler to use, providing convenient editing features that can dramatically improve your pictures in a timely fashion. Perfect for both amateur and professional photographers, Lightroom will not take as much disk space as Photoshop, which makes it absolutely ideal even for less capable computers and laptops.
Keep reading to find the top 25 reasons you should be using Lightroom for your photo editing needs.
1. Unlimited Undos
No matter how much you modify the original picture, Lightroom will keep a full history of all these actions even if you close the program. By contrast, Photoshop keeps track of the last 20 actions only, resetting its history when you close the program.
2. Slider-Based Controls
Whether you want to adjust brightness, clarity or any other such element, Lightroom offers slider-based controls that are very easy to use.
3. Sync Changes Across Multiple Images
Lightroom allows you to copy and paste changes across multiple images with just a few clicks – and it even asks you what changes you want to copy for faster image editing.
4. Easy Publishing
If you need to regularly publish images to your website, you can easily do this using Lightroom’s “Publish Services.” The program will export your picture(s) with the file name, at the dimensions, quality, and file format that you selected.
5. Nondestructive Editing
Unlike most other photo editing software, Adobe Lightroom does not edit original images, and instead imports a copy you can edit and later export as a different file.
6. Healing and Cloning
Thanks to Lightroom’s healing and cloning features, you can easily remove blemishes, wrinkles and more to improve the quality of your pictures.
7. Easy Watermarking
Adding watermarks to your photos is extremely easy in Lightroom: you can either create a watermark using the program’s function, or add your own photo as watermark and save it as predefined watermark.
8. Multitude of Presets
Lightroom uses presets instead of actions, which can dramatically modify the appearance of your pictures. You can create presets by making adjustments to a photo, or you can import them to the program.
9. Work with Multiple Files
Making changes to multiple images at the same time is possible in Lightroom – just select the desired pictures and start making adjustments.
10. Before and After View
One of the most valuable features of Lightroom is the “Before and After” feature, which enables you to compare the original and modified picture for easy reference throughout the editing process.
11. Built-in Google Maps for Geo-Tagging
Lightroom will automatically place your photos on the “Map” module if the camera you used to take them has GPS. You can even organize photos by location, which will oftentimes save you time.
12. Less Disk Space
Lightroom takes about 100MB of disk space, as compared to Photoshop’s 1GB.
13. Excellent Image Management
Lightroom can easily create backup copies of your images in the desired file formats (e.g. raw for the catalog and DNG for archival copy), add keywords with very little effort, and apply presets with just a few clicks.
14. Strong Organizing
Adobe Lightroom has been specifically designed for photographers, so its organizing features are very strong. You can group images by camera type, ISO, date, and more, and you can also create collections based on specific criteria set by you. Once done, Lightroom will add any new imported pictures to the matching collection.
15. File Conversion
Lightroom supports most camera types, and it permits users to quickly convert between different file formats.
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16. Slideshow Display
If you happen to run a studio, then you can make use of Lightroom’s slideshow display, which plays your images with a variety of options, such as text labels, watermarks, and more.
17. Backup Feature
Lightroom is one of the few photo editing software to include a backup feature, which enables you to successfully back up your catalogs as often as you wish.
18. Better Printing
If printing is required, Lightroom can professionally handle it, providing tons of amazing printing options and page layout selections to achieve the best results.
19. Work from Multiple Computers
With Lightroom, you can successfully have a working catalog on a different computer for the times when you are on a shooting trip, and merge the images and metadata into your master catalog once you are back to your primary computer.
20. Lens Correction
Most notably, Lightroom enables users to correct any distortion and chromatic aberration produced by the lens. The program will read the EXIM data within your images, identify the type of lens that was utilized and at what focal length, and then proceeds to making corrections.
21. Stress-Free Keywording
Adding keywords to your images is critical to making them searchable. Lightroom makes keywording extremely easy and stress-free, as you can add them individually to each photo, or add them to batches of pictures.
22. Easier to Use
While Photoshop is absolutely great for seasoned photographers and skilled graphic designs, it will be rather difficult to handle for beginners who want to learn photo editing the right way. Lightroom has a simple and well-structured interface that is intuitive and easy to use even for those with little or no experience.
23. Easy Photo Book Creation
Using the Book Module inside Lightroom creating photo books ready to go to print gets as easy as drag & drop!
24. Different Exporting Options
When you are done editing pictures, you have to export them – and Lightroom provides a very wide range of options. You can change file format, size, sharpen, embed profiles, burn to CD/DVD output, and more.
25. Cheaper
The last reason why Lightroom shines over Photoshop is price. The brand new Lightroom 6 can be purchased at about $149, while a standalone version of Photoshop costs over $699. The really awesome news though, is with Adobe’s Creative Cloud photography plan you can get the most up to date versions of both Lightroom and Photoshop for only $9.99 a month!
Resources to Learn Lightroom
Lucky for you, I am no Lightroom rookie and have a tremendous amount of resources available to help you get started and get results you are proud of in no time at all. Here are some links to help you get started…
Free Lightroom Tutorials – a collection of all of my Lightroom specific free tutorials
Free Lightroom Presets – click here and you can get started using my free Lightroom presets starter pack
Premium Lightroom Presets – My very best Lightroom presets for quick & easy results that you’ll love!
Lightroom Import to Export Workflow Training – Don’t know where to start with getting your photos into Lightroom? This training is made for you.
Becoming a Lightroom Expert Quickly & Easily – This Lightroom training is the one that uncovers it all. The good news is you don’t have to let the depth and detail of this training overwhelm you because you have lifetime access to it and it is neatly organized by category so you can easily navigate through the training at the pace that works best for you!
I hope you enjoyed this read and more importantly, have a better sense of what Lightroom is and what it’s capable of!
Cole
