Though quite strong in some areas, Adobe seems to have had some difficulty conceptualizing the interface for online output. Lightroom can generate slide shows and Web galleries, which Adobe has arbitrarily separated by technology, rather than treating them as different ways of viewing photos: Slide shows are output to PDF, while Web galleries are written to Flash or HTML. Both modules feel fairly undercooked, especially when compared with the options available for print, many of which would work very well for online application, like the extensive text annotations. You can upload the galleries to a custom FTP server, though, which is nice.
Furthermore, most rendering operations can really bog down the software, such as thumbnails for slide shows and especially spooling for print. I find it faster on my 1.2GHz Core Duo laptop than my 2.4GHz Pentium 4 desktop (with the same 1.5GB RAM), which makes sense given how much of it Lightroom does in the background. From a performance perspective, Lightroom is clearly a version 1.0 product.
Lightroom doesn't fully replace Photoshop, even for basic raw processing, because you need Photoshop's Proof Preview for accurate color matching. Basically, Lightroom relies on existing color profiles to map screen to print, with no print simulation view. Grrr. Adobe really gets some demerits for this. On the upside, there are plenty of users hanging out in Adobe forums and plenty of third-party tutorials, tips, and tricks on the Web waiting to help you.
Ultimately, Lightroom is one of those programs you simply have to try for yourself to ascertain how it fits into your work style. What I can tell you, is it's worth making the time to give it a shot.
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