[hart]

I'm wondering what Lightroom does that makes it special. I have Photoshop, I use Bridge, sometimes iPhoto. I read Adobe's descriptions and I'm still left wondering what additional capabilities does Lightroom have that makes it a must-have?

Thanks.

[cgc]

I replaced iPhoto with Aperture which is very similar to Lightroom. I use Aperture to do image adjustments and to organize my photos. Aperture costs $79 on the OSX AppStore and Lightroom costs $299.

What do you want to be able to do that you currently can't?

[hart]

Nothing. I'm just wondering if there's something that Lightroom does that I currently can't. I see it a lot in job ads now.

[mduell]

It's a workflow tool. It's not processing single images in PS/ACR, it's collecting and sorting and adjusting entire shoots.

[OreoCookie]

Apps like Aperture and Lightroom allow you to do `most of the edits'* much quicker than other combinations of apps. You can set the white balance in a sequence of photos within seconds, transfer other types of edits (crops, etc.) to other photos, sort, add metadata (e. g. some people use that to associate model releases to photos), find, organize, backup publish photos.

So the promise of Aperture and Lightroom is a sped-up workflow.

* What constitutes `most edits' is very different to different people. One way to think about it is this: you do all the edits to a photo until you can decide whether or not it's a photo that you want to work on for many minutes or hours with Photoshop.

[hart]

As you describe it Lightroom is focused on a professional photographer's workflow with batch processing being at the heart of it's offerings.