Photoshop isn't an ideal Photo editor though. And I mean that in both senses of the word, editing in terms of choosing images from a larger selection as well as editing as a form of retouching and correcting. Great for composites, but for general photographic work it's a PITA.

You'll notice that everyone is rapidly switching over to using Aperture and Lightroom for their workflows. Non-destructive editing and correction is where it's at.

That's why I was looking for something that could both organize AND handle the more common adjustments. Lightroom blows away iPhoto for management/organization and of course adjustments. I chose it over Aperture as well, which was much slower, took up crazy amounts of hard drive space even with previews turned off and had the most asinine concept of organization anyone could possibly ever invent.

Apple have been making some pretty decent looking interfaces lately, but some of their conceptual choices leave me puzzled.

I've always disliked iPhoto and from what I've seen of the new version I can't say anything significant enough has changed to alter that opinion. I'm not even looking for a high-end nor professional workflow. I don't work with photograph for a living, but my modest amateur needs just aren't satisfied with iPhoto.

I've got over 10k images in Lightroom at the moment. It's a lot faster than Aperture was, though it still shows some stress. Its slideshow functionality is useless for live slideshows and only suitable for rendering out a show for inclusion on DVD or to make a PDF or something. Maybe on a Quad G5 it would be reasonable.

Lightroom is missing Smart folders but I can live with that until they add the feature. The 1.1 version of the product introduced a number of features that would have prevented me from ever adopting the 1.0 version (including significant changes to its image management).

I'd like to see some additional correction/adjustment tools added that are well suited for a visual person, not a mathematician or accountant. LightZone has some retouching features that are simply the cat's ass. You *must* watch these videos.

I'd also love to see support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging in Lightroom in the future. I'm just starting to experiment with that and at least the ability to stack images is great for collecting the multiple exposures that will eventually become the single HDR shot.

I've loaded Lightroom with a keyword library of over 10000 entries it's worked fairly well. iPhoto's keywording seems rather weak, though this is one area of significant improvement with the newest version.

We're a bit off topic. I'm likely going to write an article about Aperture and Lightroom at some point in the near (I hope near) future, based on my experience with both. Some of the comments I've seen on the net, including one-week test runs with each, have been somewhat useful, but not brutally honest enough about some basic features that make a huge impact on adoption of this type of software.

My biggest gripe about Lightroom is it's made by Adobe. I also use other of their programs, but luckily Lightroom is something new and not encumbered by so much of the garbage and 20 year old legacy UI BS still present in Photoshop and Illustrator for example. Microsoft seems to take all the attention away from Adobe when it comes to discussing monopolies and how one company can ruin so much other decent software.

Ok, back to buying Dells and Apples.
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Bruno
Twisted Melon : Fine Mac OS Software