Annika1980 wrote in news:1180458743.400023.303200
@q69g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:

I use Downloader Pro to download my images and Breezebrowser to quickly view them.
Then I use Photoshop to edit them.

So somebody please tell me why I need Lightroom?
I'm considering going to a NAPP Lightroom seminar in Atlanta on Friday
given by Scott Kelby and I need to know if it'll be worth my time.

So what will Lightroom do that Photoshop won't?

If you don't go to the seminar, pick up Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom, or look online for some of the available free tutorials.

I spent a few weekends looking it over and decided that an experienced Photoshop user probably doesn't need it. Most of the nice Lightroom features (like improved black-and-white conversion) are contained in Photoshop CS3.

Adobe hasn't done a real good job of explaining in a concise way just what it is for, so I will try to do it for them...

Lightroom is an attempt to create a smooth workflow for the initial, front-end processing of your images. They have taken the early processing stages like color correction and cropping, placed them in a logical order within their menus and pallettes. The things that probably took you months to learn in Photoshop have been dumbed-down to a level where you could train an assistant in about two days to do it for you.

The original images are left intact. The adjustments to your images are not applied directly to your original files, but are stored within XMP files, so you can always change your mind later. Only when you "Export" the files are the changes actually applied to the exported file.

You will have to export the file to Photoshop and save it in a standard format to take advantage of advanced things like Layers and Filters.

If you are already pretty handy in using Bridge, you may not need Lightroom as far as workflow goes. If you shoot a whole lot of pictures and want a lot of flexibily in handling them as you select the "keepers", you may enjoy Lightroom more than Bridge.

In addition to the workflow aspect, the other potentially good feature in Lightroom is the database of your images. If you are the kind who keeps pictures forever and you want them to be keyword indexed, you may want to consider Lightroom.

The bad news part about their image database is that it still looks like a beta. It doesn't seem to have an obvious way to transfer the database to another machine (Like when you bring your laptop home from vacation and want to continue processing on another computer). I didn't see an obvious provision for offline storage on DVD's. They say it doesn't work on a networked drive. It didn't seem to recognize subsequent keyword updates made in Bridge. All-in-all, I'd wait for a version 2.0 if the database is an important feature to you, or use an alternative like Extensis Portfolio or Thumbs Plus.

I hope these observations helped. I will reconsider the product after it matures.

gw

Replied in the following topics

Why Do I need Lightroom?