It's a salutary lesson to open any recent version of Photoshop, start adjusting some RAW images and then do the same in Lightroom. The speed difference, ease of use, intuitive workflow etc between PS/Bridge and LR is an eye-opener,with the latter a winner on most fronts apart from the by now well-known shortcomings which, hopefully, will be resolved in future versions.
Straightforward non-destructive editing in LR as against intricate work using multiple adjustment layers etc in PS is a big step forward. Compared to Photoshop, LR is a lean application and makes available much - but by no means all, yet - of what the typical photographer would need. But, we haven't even reached V2 yet and at this very early stage, it's already a powerful application.
The ability to switch effortlessly in LR between one image and another (even to browse) and back again, track changes via the history panel, call on presets, see folders and files at a glance, inspect before/after or colour/bw versions, delete, find, move and manipulate folders etc in one smooth operation is welcome. All the while the original image stays in its pristine state at its original source, untouched by human hand.
Having been working in LR since its original beta release, I now find filing, saving, creating endless adjustment layers, looking for folders etc in PS/Bridge a bit of an energy-sapping chore compared to the LR way.
Admittedly, PS still needs to be used for many important adjustments such as serious cloning/healing, selections, output sharpening, transforming etc. Personally, I nowadays seldom use Bridge, preferring LR instead for its speed and efficiency. It's a great browser. It’s so good you can easily get distracted into returning to older images you thought you had finished with instead of getting on with the work in hand.
My workflow is not very sophisticated: save Canon 5D RAW images from card to folder on external HD, open LR, activate Import, enter some meaningful key-wording, bring them into LR. Now I have a folder right in front of me, a filmstrip and nearly all I need at my fingertips for immediate image adjusting. PS is open if I need it for work that LR cannot do, or does very badly, I regularly slip in and out of PS via the external editor option, save the changes and come back again to LR, looking for the adjusted image with the _edit designation. Best of all I can see where everything is in the LR folder panel without rummaging around in another, external location. You can make LR folder hierarchies as complicated or as simple as you like - me, I prefer simple. In many cases the name of the location where the shots were taken is enough but for photographers who shoot thousands of images a week, LR has multiple ways of keeping track of them.
One of the big jobs confronting me currently is scanning hundreds of black and white negatives going back a number of years from several countries. Many of these negs are dusty, spotted and scratched. LR is no good for dealing with these defects as I personally find the cloning/healing tool virtually useless and the scanner amplifies every flaw to an infuriating degree. Worse still, scanner ICE technology doesn’t work on normal b/w film. However, there are advantages too: for example, the other night, I scanned a good number of bw negatives on a Nikon V ED into a folder on an external drive, imported them straight into LR on the fly, and found myself able to work away on image adjustments in LR and PS while the scanner continued its slow, tedious grinding in the background. By the time I had done image adjustments on a batch of six pictures, I found another six were saved and ready for import, into the same folder, no fuss - and hey presto, there they were in the LR library waiting for attention while more were being added to the original folder. Those already in LR won't be duplicated if you tick only the pics you want to import as you go along.
Sure, there are plenty of improvements we would all like to see in LR – my immediate priorities are better output sharpening, better cloning and healing (I just can't get used to it in LR for any detailed work), the ability to make selections - all of these and more are already well documented shortcomings and, hopefully, solutions are on the way in some shape in future releases.
Anyway, I think LR is here to stay and will only get better – recent update misfortunes notwithstanding.
Sorry for going on at length.
