On the value of competition

[alainbriot]

So the plug-in environment I'm asking for already exists ?  Sorry, I haven't discovered any reference to this yet.  I totally agree - the flip side to my argument is that there is no point in PhaseOne, Bibble et al building complex workflow tools.  However, there are things that Lightroom does not support yet as far as I know, such as live capture / camera control.
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I agree.  Regarding live camera capture preview, I expect this will remain a feature of dedicated camera manufacturer software for some time.  There's no reason why this feature couldn't be made into a plugin either.

Alain

[John Camp]

As for "bla bla" Lightroom books – how did you know? I'm writing my own bla bla book. Maybe it will meet with your approval.

Michael
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If you're looking for beta testers on your book, I'd be happy to sign up.  

JC

[Ray]

I personally use 4 or 5 different Raw converters depending on the requirements of specific images and of my vision for each image.  I don't need more than that!
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Interesting point, Alain. It's highly unlikely that any single RAW converter will be better than all the otheres at everything.

Whist I currently tend to favour RSP over ACR, there are certain images with deep shadow noise, for example, that seem to be better handled by ACR. The 5D in particular can produce significant banding or streaking in deep shadows, whatever the ISO, but clearly more of a problem at high ISOs. ACR 3.3 seems to do a better job than RSP at removing such banding.

A plug-in for RAW converters is a great idea.