I’ve just used Beta 4 of Lightroom to process around 1400 photos taken during a two day soccer tournament. I’d been using Rawshooter Professional for the past year or so, but that product will not be updated any more due to Adobe buying the company(!) I therefore figured I’d better check out the new alternative. One positive for current Rawshooter owners is that Adobe has promised to give us all a license of Lightroom when it ships…so I got that goin’ for me;)

As others have said LR is not so snappy in terms of responsiveness…but I’m hoping that this has something to do with the beta status. Speed aside I like it. Many features are pretty intuative, but I could still use a good manual or tutorial. I’ve already got Scott Kelby’s upcoming LR book on my wish list!

Liking the show so keep up the good work!

Scott,

You are getting closer and closer every day to talking yourself into getting a Mac :)

BTW, I was at CompUSA last night and I played with the 24″ iMac …. What a great machine! I’d probably get one except that I already own an Apple cinema display so I can’t see spending $2000 for a machine like that when I already own a great display. I’ll be a getting a Mac Pro.

The print module is awesome once you understand it and it goes to the Epson driver directly and remembers previous settings (again the first setup takes time).

BW conversion is also great and flexible once you understand it.

Remember this is a beta, but spend some time and it really makes sense.

But I also agree with me that there’s no particular downside to, as I put it, “playing with a new toy.” Give it a a half hour and see if what you think. It is cool technology, and I find the actual layout and program design very appealing.

Trying it out might also convince you to hold of on buying Aperature or another RAW viewing/editing program if you really love it.

One downside you didn’t mention - and I know this is true of Windows machines, not so sure about Macs - is installing any program always seems to leave your system running slower and buggier - and that the uninstall program never gets all the gunk out. That’s a good reason not to be too wild and crazy with trying out software.

Actually, there is a pretty big downside to it. Currently it is free but it won’t always be, and no one yet knows what the price is, so if you have all your files set up in Lightroom and have become tied to the workflow, when they announce the final release, if it is more expensive than you can afford or are willing to spend, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time re-creating your lightroom setups in another program.

I think it’s important that people are aware of that before they invest too much time with the software. By all means evaluate it, but remember it is only Beta and it will expire.