Adobe Lightroom Rocks!

I remember downloading and playing with Adobe Lightroom when the first beta was made available and at the time was impressed with the speed that it could open and display images, but didn't spend too much time exploring the other possibilities. I guess I was still gung-ho about learning all the tricks in Photoshop CS2 and thought that usingLightroom was "cheating".

Any way, I've done a complete 180!!! I had to edit some images shot with a Nikon D300 this past week-end and so I downloaded the 30-day free trial of Lightroom v1.1. (CS2 didn't recognize the new Nikon raw file format) WOW!!!! Holy !@#$, Batman!!!! I'm am a convert! I love Lightroom… plus it is fast. I've used it every night now for nearly a week and still find myself finding new cool features every time I use it. My latest treasure is discovering how to create Presets in Develop module and how much time that can save me. Plus, I really like the fact that you get a preview of the presets effect when you hover over each preset.

I've got 1600+ images from a wedding I shot last week-end and this is definitely my tool of choice now. I'm also really impressed how Adobe put a lot of effort into making the tools very intutive to use. Or, am I just becoming acclimated to Adobe's mode of software presentation?

Anyway, my only drawback is the fact that version 2.0 is now in public beta and looks like it will be released around August. Do I wait or spend the bucks now and then have to pay to upgrade in a couple of months?

Thanks, Adobe… great job with Lightroom! And, here's a quick primer (from Scott Kelby) that helped me get up to speed with the tool: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=717555&seqNum=1