Originally posted by wafflehaus If I already have a full version of Photoshop, what does Lightroom offer that PS doesn't? Worth having both? Does it do the same thing as Bridge?
Really short version of the answer:
It's a much
less capable editor than Photoshop + Bridge, which can do many more specific and specialized editing tasks than Lightroom can.
But Lightroom is an asset management program and editor. It stores information about all of your photos in a database, so you can rate them, classify them, give them keywords, move them around, and then rapidly apply whatever editing adjustments you want, then publish them to online services, etc.
Lightroom is more tailored toward the workflow you need when working with large collections of photos, rather than making detailed edits to individual works.
Honestly, unless you're interested in special effects, you can probably do nearly all of the editing you need in Lightroom. Exposure adjustments, color adjustments, cropping/rotation, distortion removal, noise reduction, clone/heal for dust spot removal, etc. Lightroom does all of these things, and some of them can even be painted on selectively with a brush. There's just no "drawing" specific features, and no layers.