I am a college student with very limited funds and there is no way I could fork over $300 for the regular version. As much as I loved this program during the 30 trial, I knew it would be years before I would be able to get it. Then I found out Adobe discounts it for students and teachers! This is the same as the regular version. When you get it in the mail you have to provide proof you are a student, or teacher or whatever, through a website and then they email you a serial #. I really do appreciate Adobe lowering the price for us poor folk. Thanks again. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Student & Teacher Edition
Short and sweet. As background, I was primarily a B&W photographer in the 60s and 70s. Then a 30 year hiatus and I restarted by learning digital photography. After several years on trying to manage the chaos of digital photographs I gave Lightroom a shot with V2. It works as advertized. It is rich enough that now after a year I still have not used all its features. Don't skip over learning the keyboard shortcuts. At first I did but now I see that keyboard shortcuts are indispensable. For example, you just rate your photos by hitting a number key. Great photo? Hit 5, medicore? hit 2 or 3. hate it? Hit X.
I do have problems or perhaps misunderstandings on printing. I suspect it may be more of an issue with the printers than Lightroom. For example, on my cheap HP Photoshop 3210 it prints the way I think it should. On my HP Photosmart Pro 8800, well it would take too long to explain. I would pay a premium to have a large format photoprinter that is one with Lightroom.
Now I am one who always buy the book to supplement putzing around with the software. I would not recommend Adobe's "Classroom In A Book" for Lightroom. It's OK but Scott Kelby's Lightroom 3 is much better.
One last thing, if you are going to spend time adjusting your photographs, go get yourself a monitor color calibration tool such as Huey. The colors on your printer may not stay sync'd with your monitor. Simple and straightforward.
Hope this helps.
Excellent photo database and editing program. Very quick once you become familiar with the commands but it doesn't take too long. I have it on a 6 year old computer so it does slow the computer down quite a bit but I suspect a newer computer would handle it much better. It doesn't help that I have thousands of photos to catalog. Very worthwhile product for me and the student price was too good to pass up.
I used to use Apple's Aperture for managing my photos (both RAW and JPEG), but lightroom is just so much nicer. It's easy to use, great for photo management, and really lets you get down and dirty with your images. I can't rate this application high enough. On average, I shoot around 500 - 600 images a month. Most of them are for clients, and the rest are personal. Lightroom makes processing and cataloging images very easy. Lightroom integrates well with Photoshop for making quick edits, and it's a breeze to go back and forth.
Buy it.
I had a hardtime deciding between buying Aperture 3 or Lightroom 3. I googled this a lot and never came up with a clear answer. Eventually I ended up buying both, but if I had to say which one was better I would say it depends... I am not a professional photographer, photography is simply my hobby so keep that in mind while reading this.
Lightroom is far more superior when it comes to editing. Even though people complain they dislike they module based user interface of Lightroom I actually enjoy using it. It's very simple to find what you need and it's fun to make edits. Furthermore you can download Lightroom presets from a lot of photography websites, blogs, etc. (try goggling it) and it becomes easier to experiment with things you may have not had in mind. I always end up happy with the results I get and feel like I have control over the process. It's also very easy to move to Photoshop if you decide to make more complex edits.
However the reason I ended up buying Aperture is because I have been using iPhoto for years and have grown used used to the way it organized my library .Aperture also makes better use of your monitor. Your photo takes up almost the entire screen whereas in lightroom there is what feels like a lot of wasted space. It's so much easier to find your photos and show them to friends and family or create books and calendars. Photos have to be manually organized in Lightroom and I honestly find it unnecessary and tedious. This can be an advantage to some because Aperture stores photos in a somewhat hard to navigate library package.
Aperture is also a resource hog and slows down my computer to the point where it is infuriating. At any given moment it will suddenly use 4GB of RAM on an new MacBook Pro. The brush tool becomes impossible to use because it will begin to "jump" because the computer is running so slow. Nonetheless I have developed a workflow by storing all my photos in Aperture and if I decide to make edits I use Lightroom, and further edits go to Photoshop.
Consider buying both of them if you can, they are both great pieces of software. However if you can only afford one my advice is that if you simply want to manage your photos while making minor edits stick with Aperture, especially if you already use iPhoto. However if you would like to edit your photos for a more polished look consider buying Lightroom. It won't let you down if you learn how to work with it. - Photography - Lightroom - Digital Photography - Photo Editing'
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