Two part question here, i’ve been on and off photography for about 8-10 years and while i don’t know everything and anything about my camera, everything about composition and editing, I feel i know enough to edit photos the way i like and making them decent compositions. at this point, should i start thinking about investing into a laptop/iPad and lightroom rather than relying on the free portions of editing apps to create better edits?
I would not recommend Lightroom if my life depended on it.
Why not? It has it flaws for sure, but it’s still the industry standard and by far the most popular tool around.
The problem i have is with your choice of the word “should”. Should implies there’s a right way to do something. There is no right way to do photography. It’s an art. You’re free to do it any way you like. No one will say using Lightroom is the best or only way to edit photos.
Now do I recommend Lightroom? Yeah I do, and I’d recommend it to anyone getting started in photography. It’s a great tool that allows for lots of creative editing and produces high quality results. Most other editing software can do the same job.
Lightroom runs best on a full fledged computer. Can you use an iPad? Yeah but the mobile version of the app isn’t the same as on a PC/Mac. I’m not sure if there are any limitations or disadvantages since I don’t own an iPad.
If you plan to just upload to social media, then the phone should be fine for editing. You likely wont get any noticeable change moving to a laptop in regards to overall quality using the features (exposure, temp, highlights, etc…) your already using.
Using paid lightroom on a computer does have lots new features (AI noise reduction, etc) which are nice, but ultimately wont make your photos much better without lots of knowledge on how to use said tools.
Another big feature of computer lightroom is better file management. If this is a problem for you on the phone, this alone is a great bump in productivity if you ever need to edit a lot of photos or want to find an older photo.
All that being said, adding a laptop to the mix wont improve your photos, it will just life easier on the back end. I think its worth it to have a computer if you plan to be into this hobby long term, but I wouldnt bother breaking the bank on it, buy it when its convenient financially.
Well I use a 4 year old 15" Dell laptop & a 27" BenQ monitor.
I got the monitor two years ago when I retired and wished I had gotten it sooner. Makes a huge difference with editing, comparing before and after edits and side by side comparisons of virtual copies edited in different ways to see what I like best for the image.
I have been using editing programs similar to Lightroom since my first DX camera. But switched to Lightroom about 4 years back with my DX D5500 for its consistent upgrading and sticking with a single program to keep expanding my editing skills. Any editing question I have I can find on the Internet as so many use Lightroom.
For me, my goal is to continually get better with my compositions in camera, then to be able to edit them to how I saw them or try new styles with them.
I use LR on my iPad Pro pretty successfully. I’m sure there’s limitations, but so far in my workflow/skillset/knowledge level so far, I haven’t encountered many. Having the Apple Pencil for playing with masks is handy. If you’ve got the iPad already, it’s not a bad thought, but if you’re going full pro, you might want more horsepower and the full desktop like others have recommended. That said, I’ve produced plenty of edited photos on LR on my iPad that have been proud of and others have enjoyed without issue.
I learned how to use Lightroom on my iPhone. Every photo I’ve posted on this account was edited in Lightroom on an iPhone.
I now have a laptop and it’s obviously better, but you can absolutely learn the basics and get comfortable with the progress on your phone.
thank you for the feedback! gave you a follow 🤝🏽
Awesome, thanks!
I’m definitely an amateur as well. I really enjoy using Lightroom to process my photos. For that alone I’d recommend it. My shots look much better with a little processing. Additionally it is a database. I use keywords to organize my shots. It is great to quickly search for all my ski shots, or shots with Frank in them or summer backpacking shots in California, etc.
I take 3 months off every year for a cycling trip and use Lightroom mobile on my iPhone to process shots for my blog. I can do the basics on my iPhone but it is far far less than with Lightroom classic and my laptop. If your laptop has sufficient processing power I’d use LR classic.
Have fun with LR, shooting in raw and processing in LR has been the biggest improvement to my photography.
I use Lightroom (Classic) since first beta, before even version 1
Also I use iPad/iPhone versions as supporting tools
It’s my postproduction and photo management tool of choiceCool thing about Lightroom is subscription base. I would pay for a months worth and use the laptop you have now.