Its kinda like brushing your teeth, getting dressed, checking your email.
Just a natural part of every day.
I’m talking about using Adobe Lightroom, now in V.5
There are so many pre-sets available that whenever I upload even the simplest images, like iPhone,I know where it’ll go and how I can retrieve it.

It has always been superior asset management software, and the amount of non destructive adjustments you could make were/are fairly handy.
Still, you should be going to Photoshop for the superior tools, then bringing the image back into Lightroom for management.
But with every upgrade, they keep adding tools that make the skip to another program uneccessary.

So What’s New?
•There is a greatly improved healing function, which works like content aware fill in PS, matching surrounding areas for the fill. Sure sensor dust, or specular hightlights, are mighty offensive, but to remove an object and keep a clean BG, used to require the power of PS.

See if you can point out the removed objects. Kept a little rough so you can see easier:

•The next new feature is of particular interest to me as a traveling photographer.
Of course when media cards are ingested, I use a portable RAID, a Touch Tech Duo, to make sure I’m backed up.
Thankfully with SMART Preview,essentially offline editing, I can work on the images while on the plane, without hooking up the external drive. Once back on the ground, the work is effected onto the images once the master file is hooked up via the RAID drive.

A coupla small bits: one button UPRIGHT tool, corrects perspective. They had the tools before, but this is one button.
check it:

The last of the biggies for me is a Radial Filter or Gradient.
Essentially this is a scalable oval that allows you to correct with all of your favorite sliders all within the oval.
In my world of commercial production, we have had this in color correction for years and called them Windows.
You won;t be able to tell the magic that is possible til you learn the delicate touch.
Too many folks take the tool and make it into a vignetting tool which is the wrong way to approach it.
Lot’s of power there and you can use multiple “Gradients”

SO there you have it.
Strong tools from the company that lives and breathes images.
Just saw it on sale for $100.

Why wouldn’t you be using Lightroom?