Well thought out. Photographer friendly. Powerfull.

Slow on older systems. A big minus - does not allow 3rd party noise reduction plug-ins.

I must say I really love the capabilities of Lightroom. I also like the way it closely emulates a photographer’s work flow and methodology. However, if I had known that Adobe was not supporting 3rd party noise reduction software plug-ins, I probably would have stuck with Olympus Master 2 that came as a freebee with my camera. I simply assumed (wrongly) that this would be the case. They have issued a software developer’s kit (SDK) for export type plug-ins but not for “filter” type plug-ins. Curiously, Adobe has provided for noise reduction plug-ins for their other Photoshop products. A cynic might think that this is a marketing strategy to encourage purchase of their other photoshop products. Please explain, Adobe!

Selective edit tools, improved cataloguing system, improved printing and exporting, lens vignetting correction/adjustment filter, tighter integration with Photoshop CS3. Other various improvements that i'm sure to be missing here as of now.

possibly slow performance depending on your systems configuration, but I have not experienced any myself. Some mildly quirky issues but i feel a patch soon to come will clear most things up. No lens distortion correction tools. One would think that a software geared exclusively towards photographers would have such a relevant filter.

Having started with LightRoom 1, I had the time to get comfortable with the concept of editing my images "virtually". That is, whatever you do to your files in the LightRoom softwares never actually gets applied to them but rather gives you previews of what the image would look like with the changes and edits made to them. So, no harm is ever done to your original image file and it's original form always remains intact. A digital negative indeed. This information gets stored in a data base in the LightRoom folder and is always there for the file when you view and work on it. If you like what you have done to the image, you can print from it or export it to a different file format (Jpeg, TIFF, PSD ) with the edits just as it appears in LR.

I liked the whole idea and concept of LR and it soon became the software that I used almost exclusively for importing and cataloguing and editing my work.
I did have to come out and edit further with Photoshop, because I do like to selectively edit my images by dodging and burning, applying filters, etc. Here's where LR2 really changed things alot in my workflow.

The addition of the selective edit tools in LR2 alone makes this an incredibly powerful program. By using a brush one can selectively apply exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, color, clarity, sharpening as well as the cool "skin softening" feature. There is also a Graduated Nuetral Density filter, lens vignetting correction/adjustment tool, and the addition of a deeper Clarity tool which now adjusts from -100 to +100 instead of the more limited 0 to 100. The minus side of the filter offers some very nice blurring and misty effects and also gives skin in portraits a smooth flattering look. A very nice enhancement.

LR2 now utilizes a more sophisticated cataloguing system with some very nice features. Not only does it recognize and track all your image folders and subfolders but now keeps track of what drive they exist on. In this day and age of multiple hard drives and external back up drives, etc. this is a very nice enhancement. In the folders area of the LR2 screen, we now see not only the image folders but also the hard drive that they are on. there is a hard drive status indicator as well which tells us how large the drive is and how much free space is available. It really feels to be integrated with my entire system which is nice.

Another neat feature is the "Smart Collections" This keeps track of all your saved quick collections as well as tracking your last imports, your rated images, images without keywords and more. I really like the tracking of images without keywords because this makes it a breeze for me to keyword the images I may have missed in the past.

The printing module is a big improvement. It is alot easier in LR2 to set up an image for printing on various size papers than it was with LR1. There are also some nice picture packages that allow you to print multiple size images on a single sheet.

Exporting images into formats for sending to clients or displaying on the web now has a few nice enhancements , one being the sharpening control. You can now sharpen an image while exporting which saves a step in the whole process.

A much tighter integration betwen LR2 and CS3. you can now export multiple RAW files into CS3 "merge to HDR" "panorama stich" export into CS3 as a smart object for further more intricate editing without harm done to original file.
Please note that this great improved integration with photoshop is only available with CS3. I am not sure why, as CS2 was the first to introduce "smart objects" also has merge to hdr and pano stitching features. It would seem to me that it would have been capable of the tight integration with LR2, but perhaps the people at Adobe would like to "encourage" people to upgrade to CS3 as well.

LR2 is still a fairly new piece of software. There has been some buzz on the LR forums about slow performance, especially when using the selective edit tools and some other quirky issues. I have not had any problems with slow down or system crashes, and for the most part the software has worked as I expected.

I did occasionally experience a condition in that jpegs that I had exported from LR2 did not take further adjustments in CS2 later. After trying to edit them a bit further in CS2, I was not allowed to save the edits to the files and saw an error window upon trying. This did not happen all the time, and when it did I merely exported the files again from LR2 and all was well.

So, I suspect from with what I have experienced and with the buzz in the LR forums that a patch may be in the works soon. I would highly recommend this product and not let these early issues stand in the way of benefiting from what is a powerful and exciting new program.

Customer Service

Never neded any, although before it was clear to me that LR2 only improved integration with CS3 I tried to contact support to find out if it should be the same with CS2 and i never got a reply . . .
I know now anyway

Similar Products Used:

Jasc paint shop pro, Photoshop 7.0, CS2, LR1.4.1

* Improved editing with Brush Tool.
* Gradation filter with full edit capabilities.
* Enhanced Slideshow elements. Opening/Closing User edited text slides.
* Improved HTML tools and themes.
* Ease of use. Non-destructive process that keeps the original image intact.

* A bit memory intensive. I may add additional RAM to prevent some paging/refresh issues. This is not a huge issue, but should be mentioned. Slower processors may have some difficulty in executing LR2 with speed and ease. It has NOT crashed, nor froze in any application, just slower than I would like.

I have always been pleased with LR Ver. 1. Well I have installed the Upgrade to, LR Ver. 2 and I must say... WOW!

The preset filters are basically the same, the differences are 2 screen management, vastly improved SLIDE SHOW (presentation features), more options for image to website process, but most impressive element of all is the BRUSH MODE. I have had to rely heavily on CS2 and other softwares in layering to obtain desired results. Well with LR2 Exposure, Brightness, Saturation, Sharpness, Contrast and Gradation filter in all adjust modes, with easily sized brush, feather and density/flow control is to die for. Lightroom2 is a must have for the sake of collection organization alone. The Brush Tool takes this software over the top. I encourage all to at least download the trial and give this program a chance to impress you as much as it has impressed me. I am finding out images of mine thought destined for the "Digital Trash Can," have been pulled into Lightroom2 collection files and these images are now usable and fully editable to where once considered a loss are useful again. Bravo to Adobe - totally awesome software here. This program gives me a confidence in processing, realized only in my former Darkroom days and film. Digital imagery is quickly coming into its prime - and this program is a big help in getting it there.

Customer Service

Adobe online store is excellent. You can order HARD COPY of CD, or download the program and install over the internet. CD provides a security level I prefer, so had to wait till CD arrived to test drive. There is a FREE TRIAL at the adobe website - well worth the time to download and check it out - you won't be displeased.

Similar Products Used:

Lightroom 1, though Lightroom 2's predecessor - Lightroom 1 is pale in comparison to this great product. I have used Lightroom 1 for over 2 years.