Lightroom Advantages vs. Camera Raw

A huge disadvantage of LR for me is the issue of redundant thumbnails.  Since my work flow over time requires a movement of images between files, LR captures a thumbnail for each prior location, which renders LR incapable of managing my inventory of images.

Mod.Yoyo wrote: How essential are the workflow options?

Non-essential to some; absolutely essential to others - including me:

Publish services, plugins...

For example, in Photoshop/Bridge/ACR, there is no way to synchronize changed photos with online services; in Lightroom - just click 'Publish' when you're ready...

And of course some people use the map, book, slideshow, print, and web modules. I don't.

Cheers,

Rob

HI,

Depends on what you are doing with your images. You can not do compsings with lr. You can not remove objects like wires or so.

BUt you can do image optimzation. All the things with colors, light, dodge and burn annd all that cool stuff. In a very efficient way! No layers, no mask! Just painting.

LR is the last program i would delete drom my computer, ever! Download the trail and have a test!

Another advantage is hard drive space.

My Raw files from the D600 are about 29 MB. All Lightroom edits are stored as metadata in the Lr catalog and don't increase the size of the image file.

The same file edited in CS5 as 16-bit image and saved as psd with two layers has a size of 381 MB. And flattened it still has 134 MB.

Although external hard drives are huge and not overly expensive - a size difference of 1:13 (in the case of the psd with two layers) matters in my opinion.

As I understand it, the main advantage that Lightroom has versus Photoshop and Camera Raw is the workflow features that are especially optimized for handling large amounts of photographs.

Yes, I agree this is a big advantage of LR over Camera Raw. It's been a long time since I used Camera Raw, but I think another advantage is that you can create presets in LR to give you various different looks/edit settings. The cataloging/organizing/searching in LR is also much more powerful than Photoshop/Camera Raw/Bridge.

Is there anything image-editing-wise that I can do in Lightroom that I can't in Camera Raw?

You should be able to get the exact same results in both, as far as the final edited image is concerned. LR might get you there quicker, as discussed.

How essential are the workflow options? Do you recommend I buy Lightroom? (Cost is not an issue, although I'd rather not waste 80 dollars)

I can't judge what is essential to you. I do know that many people and domesticated animals who use Lightroom, including myself and my pets, make statements similar to "I don't know how I got along without it". Yes, I recommend it. But please don't go out and waste 80 dollars (although I thought the cost was much higher). Instead, download the free trial, view some tutorials, and try it for yourself. And please please please do not skip the viewing tutorials part (or equivalently reading FAQs and other beginner materials), this is where many people go wrong, because LR does not work the same way that other photographic software works. Many people just assume it works the same, or "how different can it be", or I can figure it out myself, and that is the downfall of many potential LR users.