Should i buy elements or lightroom

Convenient and advanced photo management. Although Photoshop Elements offers file organization, it is only available at a basic level. In Lightroom, you may also create collections that help you sort files by different topics. Batch processing using the quick development panel. With the help of this panel, you can edit batches of RAW files by applying filters or other changes in the form of white balance correction to all shots simultaneously.

Creative adjustment tools. The adjustment brush, gradient filter and vignette, post-cropping are some of the best creative adjustment tools available in Lightroom. With these tools, I correct the most common mistakes without affecting the quality of the images.

You can darken or lighten the sky, add a smooth transition, eliminate or create a vignette, adjust certain areas of the image, apply Dodge and Burn, sharpen or soften.

Convenient work with masks. It expands or reduces the selected area, depending on the lighting or color. Panorama merge. It uses content-dependent technology to automatically fill the uneven edges of your panorama. No picture retouching tools. Unlike PS Elements, it can only perform basic adjustments with the help of stain removal and adjustment brushes. They are effective for eliminating red-eye effect, teeth whitening, removing unnecessary elements from the shot or cleaning skin from black spots.

Only for photos. Speaking of the picture editor, you will get 3 modes — Quick, Guided and Expert. If the Quick mode generally offers the most common tools with the ability to adjust the intensity resembling a mobile application , the Expert mode is already an advanced version of the picture editor.

Here you will find almost everything that is present in the older version of Photoshop, including actions, combo layers, customizable stamps and more. Click on a panel to reveal choices. The choice with the arrow icon is the original setting. Those on either side give you more or less of the effect. Sliders on top of the grids look like Lightroom, but they are limited to the choices in the grid.

Effects, Textures, and Frames come with the program. Effects work like Presets in Lightroom. There does not appear to be an easy way to add more or create your own. The Guided editing workspace helps you make changes to your image. Click on the change you want to make, and the program helps you do it. Guided adjustments are grouped into tabs across the top. There is a user-friendly description and a before and after picture.

This gives you a sense of what the change does to your image. Selecting an edit opens a step-by-step guide making each simple to use. Many of the adjustments are basic: exposure, contrast, cropping, and colour enhancement. Many have sliders like those in Lightroom. Others let you do advanced edits on your photos.

You can remove objects, replace backgrounds, create double exposures and reflections. The Expert edit workspace is a simpler version of Photoshop. The tools on the left include healing brushes , shapes, text, and content-aware move.

Each comes with user-friendly presets and simple instructions. On the right is a layers panel. This works like layers in Photoshop. You can even add layer masks. Filters and styles available in Photoshop are also in Elements.

Elements adds graphics and frames popular with consumer photographers on social media. Clicking the More icon in the bottom right corner adds many other Photoshop features. You can open many types of image files in both programs. This includes raw files. Both programs have a catalogue system. In Lightroom Classic, this is the Library module. The Photoshop Elements Organiser opens separately from the editing program. Elements uses AI to organise photos.

It groups them by people, places, and events. There is an auto curate function that groups like images together. We cover more about prices and how Creative Cloud works below.

Adobe Lightroom is approximately equivalent to a film chemical darkroom in that it allows you to edit and manipulate the defining properties of a photograph, such as exposure, focus, color, tone and overall composition crop, rotation, orientation, etc. Many professional and serious photographers will process their photos first in Lightroom. Then they will move into Photoshop for fine-tuning, creating composites, adding text and so forth. Unlike Photoshop, all edits in Lightroom are nondestructive, retaining the original image data.

In addition, when working with RAW files, Lightroom's ability to apply all its edits before a photo is converted from RAW to a more universally useful format results in better and more precise image quality. Adobe offers two versions of Lightroom. What's particularly confusing is that the high-powered desktop application that has long been popular with professional photographers is now called Lightroom Classic instead of simply Lightroom.

And the new cloud-enabled program is now called Lightroom. Both Lightroom Classic and Lightroom are available only when you buy a subscription to one of Adobe's Creative Cloud plans.

The Lightroom desktop application is part of an ecosystem that includes cloud storage for your photographs, and mobile apps for iOS and Android tablets and phones.

When you import a photo, tag or catalog pictures, or save an edited image on any of your connected devices, it's automatically synced to your cloud photo library. In other words, the original image, your edits and the file's metadata are available on all devices: your computer, tablet, phone, even on an Apple TV.

In addition, your photos are automatically backed up. Lightroom's desktop interface is more streamlined and less comprehensive than Lightroom Classic, and the mobile apps are even more limited. In essence, Lightroom is the more modern app, suitable for on-the-go photographers who want to quickly edit their photos in an interface that is easy to master. On the other hand, Adobe has been adding features and tools to Lightroom on a regular basis such as HDR and panorama merge.

So, while it isn't on a par with Lightroom Classic, its functionality continues to grow. More precise tools include a Healing Brush for painting out imperfections, and both Linear Gradient and Spot Gradient masks for applying edits to specific areas of your picture. Lightroom provides more guidance for the new user than Classic.

For instance, tool tips automatically pop up when you hover your cursor over the name of a tool or command. In addition, interactive tutorials are currently available on the home page of the mobile apps and will soon be integrated into the desktop. Lightroom Classic is a far more mature product than Lightroom, with a more comprehensive and deeper feature set that is reflected in its tabbed interface.

In the Lightroom Classic Library tab, you can compare zoomed-in views of similar images side by side, which makes it an interface that's easier and quicker for sorting and rating of a large number of photos. What sets apart the edit tools in Lightroom Classic's Develop tab from Lightroom's is both their depth and breadth, which add up to greater precision and control. Intelligent searching, cloud syncing, updated tools and faster performance make it much better than PS Elements.

Both programs allow for great image editing, but each was designed for a specific audience and purpose. Adobe Photoshop Elements — Created for beginners in both photography and graphic arts. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom — Lightroom was designed for professional photographers and serious amateurs. It provides advanced non-destructive editing, streamlined workflow management, and many tools for batch processing and publishing.

As the name suggests, the program takes the main elements in Photoshop and Lightroom and combines them into a quick, easy-to-learn program. It does just about everything a casual photographer needs, from photo organization and basic edits to object removal, layers, and even skin smoothing.

Adobe Photoshop Elements also happens to be extremely user friendly. The home screen allows you to choose between the photo organizer and photo editor, as well as offering Guided Edit options for inspiration.

Sensei also tags and sorts your photos for you though it helps if you do at least some of the tagging yourself. Quick Edit and Guided Edits do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Expert level, on the other hand, offers a lot of the manual control you can find in Photoshop, like layers, healing brushes, and paintbrushes.

Adobe Lr Classic has long been the photo editor of choice for professional photographers. Not only can you save many different iterations of the same image, but you can also go back as many steps as you like at any point in the editing process.