Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 £8.78 / $9.99 per month* Windows /Mac

Image cataloguing and editing in one

hotoshop is a terrific image editor, but its companion Bridge is not designed for managing large photo collections. Lightroom is. It’s based around a powerful image management database, and can make light work of organising, filtering and searching big image collections.

The editing tools are the same as those in Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in, reconfigured into a single window. Modules address each stage of your photographic workflow: importing and organising your photos, enhancing them, then sharing and printing them via Slideshow, Book, Print and Web modules. You can even log where they were taken.

PLightroom’s editing adjustments are non-destructive. You can revisit and rework them any time you like. If you want to use these edited images in any other applications, you can export them as JPEGs or TIFFs.

Performance

Lightroom’s cataloguing tools are terrific, but because it’s based around Adobe Camera Raw, its editing options are limited. You can apply localised adjustments with a brush, graduated and radial filters, and you can remove spots or unwanted objects with the Spot Removal tool. There’s also automatic lens correction (for supported lenses) and an excellent Upright tool for fixing converging verticals and other perspective issues.

What you can’t do is create layered images, make complex corrections or create sophisticated multi-step effects. For that, you’ll still need Photoshop. The good news is that if you subscribe to Adobe’s Photography Plan, you get both.

You can still get Lightroom 5 as a regular purchase with a permanent licence, but it costs more than a one-year subscription to Photoshop CC and Lightroom together.

A subscription will also enable you to get the most from your mobile device – there’s a free Lightroom Mobile app for iOS or Android, which offers basic editing and organising tools and synchronises with the desktop version.