Lightroom

I believe that LR2 is probably the most significant software offering for photographers since the beginning of digital photography. LR2 was developed by photographers for photographers. It allows you total control over your digital photography from file and project management to the look and feel of your images. LR1 was the initial LR but it was just the beginning. LR2 is a huge step forward from LR1.
One of the most important aspects of LR2 is that it is totally (100%) non-destructive. Your original image, as it came out of your camera, is NEVER altered. You can mess with it, ad-nauseam, until it is turned inside out and upside down, and you have never lost your original and it is always available as a live comparison while working in LR2. Also, while working on an image, and you find that the path that you have just gone down is not working, it is just one click to step back to anywhere in the modification path, even back to ground zero. Plus, you can create multiple simultaneous virtual modification paths. All modifications to images in LR2 catalogs, are nothing but a series of instructions (your modifications) and are virtually applied to the original image for displaying on your monitor. The only time that you get an image file with the applied modifications is when you output or export the image. That, of course, creates a new image file containing the real modifications that you applied virtually in LR2.
LR2 has numerous ways to automatically tweak your image. Most of the LR2 features can be applied to images on import or by synchronization to multiple images. LR2 also has a half dozen or so generic camera calibrations that can be automatically or manually applied to images. You can also calibrate your camera(s) to Lightroom so that LR2 will automatically apply the color/density variances to correct your camera's images to a known standard.
And all of this is non-destructive. Your original images, as your camera recorded them, have not been altered.
Unique to LR2 is the Catalog. All images in LR2 belong to a Catalog. You can have multiple Catalogs but only one open at a time. Simply put, a Catalog is something that contains information about your images to help you locate, preview, and organize your image library. Your images can be located anywhere. Your LR2 Catalog knows where they are and makes them, their Metadata, and their modification lists available to you in LR2.
What LR2 has become (the current version is V2.4) is the file cabinet/ darkroom/finished print/web interface standard. To me, LR2 in my view into my digital images. I use Photoshop as a 'plug-in' to LR2. It is seldom that I use PS - I use it to remove things like power lines, to put a white line (stroke) around an image (see my web site), to do esoteric stuff like 'Content Aware Scaling', etc. LR2 is intuitive for photographers while PS is not. I believe PS is more aimed at Graphic Artists/Designers than ordinary photographers. Besides PS, many other programs can run as LR2 plug-ins, such as Photomatix, all of the Nik packages, SmugMug, etc. By using other programs as external plug-ins, your original camera image is never in jeopardy. LR2 gives PS an 'exported' version of your image, with your LR2 changes either applied, or not, it then PS returns a new image file (.psd) with the PS changes added to it.
I had a conversation with Adobe's Julieanne Kost (a photographer), who was a contributor in the making of LR and also gives LR & PS workshops. Her name is in the start-up banners of both LR & PS. The conversation was about using LR2 as the main digital image software interface and use everything else (PS and other packages) as plug-ins. Her answer was yes... that's the best way for photographers to proceed. http://www.jkost.com/windowseat.html 

IMHO,

Jim Brick
www.visualimpressions.com







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