Only a few months ago, Jeff Schewe was posting on this site mocking the claims by Nikon that a product like Capture provides all the editing capability that many photographers need. And now he has joined the cheering for Lightroom which makes essentially the same claim for an even more limited set of editing tools. I think he was right the first time.
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Since my name was mentioned, I assume I'm justified in jumping in here...Nikon Capture VS Lightroom right now, Lightroom wins...Nikon Capture is a light duty raw processing app, Lightroom is a database driven digital asset management application with raw processing, slideshow and pretty heavy duty printing capability thrown in. Can you even print out of Nikon Capture?
I'll take the liberty of cross posting a post I made in the Lightroom forums (cause I'm too lazy to just re-write it here)
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Lightroom is a database driven digital photo tool that is particularly well suited to do metadata edits of images (primarily RAW but with similar controls and functionality with tif and jpg) and move those photos from import through either export or output ASAP.
Photoshop is a pixel based editing tool that is particularly well suited to the editing of actual pixels. Photoshop, without Camera Raw can't even open RAW images...there is no current method in Photoshop/Camera Raw to apply the exact same edits to RAW and tiff/jpgs. The RAW controls of Camera Raw can't easily be applied by using Photoshop's image adjustment controls.
Lightroom is designed for doing things that photographers need done...Photoshop is designed for things that digital imaging artists need done. There is a HUGE difference. Lightroom will never be the image compositing/retouching tool that Photoshop is and Photoshop, because of it's size and feature set can never be the workflow tool that Lightroom can be.
I love Photoshop...I'm real good in Photoshop...I love Lightroom too but for different tasks (and for different reasons). You need to get your head around the fundimental differences betweem a pixel editor (Photoshop) and a workflow tool (Lightroom).
Also, because Bridge is an image browser (yeah, it's got a lot more) it is NOT a database driven digital asset management tool. Bridge will always serve all of the apps in Creative Suite with even more functionality in the future for InDesign, Illustrator and others-not just Photoshop. It looks like the original Photoshop Browser, because that's where it came from and it's first incarnation, Bridge 1.0 is just that-it's currently best used with Photoshop...which is a pixel editor.
Lightroom, as simple as it may look now, is potentially _FAR_ more but for a smaller segment of the user base that is served by Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Digital imaging artists, retouchers, web artists, graphic designers, video artists, digital illustrators, prepress pros-all the groups that make up Photoshop's user base may not have any use for Lightroom. That's fine...Photoshop will continue and serve all of those groups.
Digital photographers-those people dealing with hundreds or thousands of digital captures however may find that Lightroom serves their purposes perfectly (if they pitch in and help Adobe develop the tool set and features they need).
Your choice really, pitch in and help design your dream workflow app, or just keep doing what you do in Bridge/Photoshop. But, at this point Lightroom ain't going away-Adobe has made the committment to photographers to develop it. So...what do you want it to be?
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So, if you want to make a difference and help design your OWN digital imaging app, spend some time in the [a href=\"http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/]Lightroom Forums[/url]...