I bought Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom together and at first I thought I made a huge mistake when I learned that the functions in Lightroom are the same as Camera Raw...but...Lightroom has its own thing going on. It's all about doing global adjustments and it's also a database for managing your collection. It's a photographer's tool for images that are almost the way you want them, it's not a manipulator\retoucher tool. Only Photoshop can do that. But exporting back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop is pretty easy. I only use Lightroom for my digital stuff. For the film scans I still prefer Photoshop. Lightroom's Split Toning thing is really the bee's knees. At first I just figured it was for doing B&W toning, but when you use it on a color image it can really do some neat tricks if you use it sparingly. That's how the warmth was achieved with that otherwise stark black 'n green shot. You're basically colorizing the shadows and highlights.
Lightroom's interface has made me rethink some ancient conventions, though. The "Target" tool modes for example, you basically click and drag on an area of the photo and move the mouse up and down to change the value. All without having any dialog box to interact with. That's pretty cool. The parametric curves threw me at first, but I can see the advantage it has over the point curve. Not quite as fast to work with, but then nothing is. I don't recommend using a G4 if you like speed. These apps seem like they were designed with the new fangled blazing Intel chips. I guess I'll manage, though.
