> The problem I have with Lightroom is that in my case, I see it
> as a redundant piece of software.
Somewhat, yes. I'd definitely classify it as a tool
specifically designed for the working pro dealing with large
quantities of photographs within specific projects or
assignments. For the casual or low-volume shooter, I think it's
pretty much a waste of time/investment as it is almost totally
redundant.
> Unless it can replace Olympus Viewer that I use for RAW
> conversion,
Yes. But some of us have been using two or three different
converters all along because of how they deal with microdetail
or color/contrast curves.
> CS2 that I use for editing
Chances are, that you really only use a handful of
features/capabilites of CS2 which wouldn't be made redundant by
Lightroom. Also, you may find that these handful of
features/capabilites are easily available in other lower-cost
editors. Lightroom may allow some of you to jump off the
"upgrade treadmill" with Photoshop.
> Qimage that I use for printing,
Somewhat. Again, we're talking about a tool designed for
high-volume use, not the casual user doing one-offs. As a
portrait/wedding/event photographer, I need to easily handle
images with as little effort as possible. Case in point, I
photographed a theatrical production last week and shot the
entire project RAW. I had well over 200 images from about an
hour of shooting. I loaded the images into Lightroom (and RSE
as I'm still in learning curve and Lightroom was too blasted
slow), color balanced and applied some curves adjustments after
doing a culling down to 76 images. It took just a few minutes
to blast through the 76 images (identify "key" images, adjust
those and then copy those settings to all similar images). Once
done with the editing AND cropping, which Lightroom is brilliant
at, I outputed the entire selection to JPEGs, burned them on a
CD and was done in about two hours. It would have been faster
had I not duplicated the effort in two different systems.
The printing aspect of Lightroom is pretty good. I can easily
output the entire mess of pictures to my printer in whatever
print format (multi-up) I want. However, for the most part, I
outsource my printing, so that module won't be used much for
now.
> feeling Lightroom will cost upwards of $250.
Me too. I won't be very happy about that if true.
AG
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