A Comparison of Lightroom to Photoshop Elements

If you want to purchase photo editing software from Adobe, you have several options. Consider your primary use of a photo editing program before purchasing either Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Photoshop Elements.

Function

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom offers users a way to organize and edit photos, while Photoshop Elements is a less complicated version of Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard raster based image editing software, targeted at the non-professional user. Elements can be used for a variety of purposes, including creating graphics and editing photographs, while the functionality of Lightroom is limited to the latter.

Features

• Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, you can sort and organize photographs on multiple hard drives. Lightroom also enables you to accomplish some photo editing, though you can only apply effects to the entire photograph. With Adobe Elements, you can apply effects to just a portion of an image in addition to other features, such as layered image editing.

Considerations

• If you have a lot of photographs and would like a product to sort images and apply basic effects, Lightroom is an effective option. Though Photoshop Elements does not provide a way to sort through a large volume of images, it has many more photo editing features. Elements may be better suited to your needs if you would like to do any kind of image editing beyond basic functions.