Depending on who you ask, either Photoshop or Lightroom is the world’s most popular photo editor. I’d be inclined to back Lightroom, given that it’s clearly photography-focused, whereas Photoshop is really a design tool that also does photography. But both miss a huge part of the photography style spectrum – what I’m going to call ‘organic’ photography.
So yes, Lightroom can apply all manner of preset effects to simulate fading, grain, vignettes and more. But it doesn’t do borders, light leaks, tilt-shift effects, multiple exposures, creative blur and a whole bunch of other photographic effects that can overcome the sometimes sterile precision of digital images. And yes, you can do any or all of these things in Photoshop if you know exactly what to do, have all the assets you need and can put the time into engineering these results.
But what Adobe completely misses is that people want ideas. They want inspiration. They want to see effects and styles they hadn’t thought of and to be able to apply them quickly and easily using easily grasped tools.
They just don’t get that from Photoshop, while Lightroom presets have to work with a limited set of tools that can only take images so far. Adobe has thrown its whole weight behind Generative AI (why not, as it promises to be such a cash cow) and seems interested in little else.
This is why programs like ON1 Photo RAW/ON1 Effects exist, or the DxO Nik Collection or left-field tools like CameraBag from nevercenter.com (check it out!). If you want an efficient non-destructive digital hub for your photography, it’s hard to beat Lightroom, but it just doesn’t have that extra spark of inspiration we all need from time to time.
The image for this article was made in ON1 Photo RAW. It uses tools that Lightroom doesn’t have, including a texture effect, image border, glow and bokeh, but this is about more than just editing tools. The point is that ON1 Photo RAW (and the Nik Collection, and CameraBag Pro) give you instant ideas. They show you styles and treatments you wouldn’t have thought of. They let you try out radically different treatments with a few clicks and adapt and change them with a few clicks more. They bring the excitement and discovery back to photo editing.
And this is what I think Adobe is missing, and has always missed. Use Lightroom as your digital hub by all means, but don’t imagine that what Lightroom can do is everything that photography and photo editing can do. We don’t need AI, we just need inspiration.
