Most web and graphic designers use Photoshop on a daily basis as one of the main tools of the trade. Photoshop is incredibly powerful for designing and for photo editing, but Adobe also has Light room, which can be used for processing/editing photos and for organization of photo files.
As a designer you probably work with a lot of images, including those provided by clients, purchased stock photos, free stock photos, and possibly even your own photos. Because designers work with so many photos, and because many designers are also photography enthusiasts, Light room has become increasingly popular even outside of the circles of just professional photographers.
Also helping to boost Light room's popularity is its inclusion in Adobe’s Creative Cloud. If you have a Creative Cloud subscription for software like Photoshop and Illustrator, you also have access to Light room.
The early versions of Light room included basic functionality for editing photos, but the Library Module for organizing photos was equally important. Since photographers, even hobbyists, can easily build up an archive of thousands of photos, keeping them organized is essential. But over the years, with each new version, Light room's Develop Module has become increasingly powerful, and Light room users find themselves opening Photoshop less and less.
One of the best ways to take advantage of Lightroom’s capabilities, especially if you are just getting started with the program, is to make use of develop presets, which can be used to instantly apply specific settings to your photos. They serve a very similar purpose as Photoshop actions that would be used in Photoshop to apply a certain type of effect to a photo.
Presets can help to speed up your editing workflow, allow you to get amazing effects that you might not be able to duplicate on your own, and they can also serve as an excellent educational resource if you want to learn how to create different types of effects. There are many presets available for purchase, but there are also some that you can download for free
