Once you see the name Adobe on a product, it doesn't take long to realize that you are going to have a powerful and elegant experience using it. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does not disappoint. It is Adobe's newest program for the professional photographer, but consumers who want a higher level of managing and editing photos can also enjoy its power. It is the toolbox to manage, adjust, and present large volumes of digital photographs efficiently and expeditiously. It frees you to spend less time behind the computer and more time behind the lens — where you belong.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom handles digital RAW files seamlessly, plus just about any other image format, thus making it popular with the digital photographer. It has many easy-to-use tools for correcting images globally but one can also access Adobe Photoshop for more advanced editing power. I corrected several photos in Photoshop CS2 and it was very impressively easy and fast to do. Lightroom contains five distinct modules: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, and Web.

In the Library module, you can view photos in groups or individually. You can select a group and place them in a quick collection or assemble them into lasting collections, and recall them at any time. Lightroom is great at keeping track of the imported shoots (sets of shots) and allowing changes of keywords and metadata at any time.

The Develop module is your virtual dark room with powerful tools to enhance your photos. You can quickly apply changes to a group of photos by a click of the Synchronize button. You can save the settings as a preset and apply them again with just one click. The History panel allows you to view all the changes you've made. You can see current changes and previous changes and can jump back and forth between the changes at will. The best part is that the changes you make to a photo are non destructive. You can always revert back to your original photo.

Besides the tools for correcting color, exposure, etc., Lightroom has powerful cropping and straightening tools as well as dust busters that can fix artifacts created when camera sensors gather dust. The sliders are easy to use without any significant learning curve.

The Slideshow module lets you create stunning slideshows for your clients and friends. You can quickly resize, zoom, rotate, and crop photos to fit your layout and save them as a Slideshow you can use to wow your viewers. You can also add music, backdrop controls, margins, and shadows. If you're a Mac user with Apple TV, use it to show your slideshow on High Definition TV with surround sound. You can also export it to disc or email it as a PDF to clients and friends.

The Print module offers superior photo printing. You can quickly create contact sheets, proofs, or gallery prints. There are a variety of templates to choose from for contact sheets and single photo printing. You can also adjust and customize layouts and save them as Presets.

The Web module lets you build Web presentations in Flash or HTML. You can preview your Web Gallery inside Lightroom before uploading it to your Web server for oublic viewing.

The Identity Plate allows you to brand your own copy of Lightroom. This feature can serve to dazzle clients when using Lightroom to review images.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom's competition is Apple's Aperture. I have worked extensively with Aperture since the flawed first version. I am super impressed with Lightroom for its speed and ease of use.

Lightroom's System Requirements offer an enormous advantage over Aperture: it will run well on almost any Mac made in the last 2-3 years. By contrast, Aperture will not even install on anything less than a Mac with 1.5-GHz G4 PPC and most reviewers report that to achieve maximum performance you need an Intel-based Mac or a G5 with high-end graphics cards. Lightroom is also cross-platform (Win/Mac), while Aperture is Mac only.

Lightroom is blazingly fast compared to Aperture. I was impressed with the ease of use and elegant interface. It was FAST on both test systems!

I don't like the Full screen mode; it's not really full screen. However, this is a minor negative compared to the wonderful positive experience photographers will enjoy with this amazing application from Adobe. It rates a very enthusiastic 5 out of 5 Apples for getting it right in the first edition.