Hi,
i m trying Adobe Lightroom, because some people told me it speeds up your worklow and help u be much more efficient in producing and selling good images.
What is your opinion? Any advice about how to use it with the best results?

I have mostly been using bridge.  the bridge on CS3 I think is really great.  It is too bad you can't edit raw images directly in bridge but it works good for sorting and inspecting.

One thing I don't like about lightroom is that the changes you make can only been seen in lightroom.  If you quit using lightroom all the raw changes and keywords and such are lost (unless i am mistaken).  Editing in bridge goes into the metadata file so it can be read by other programs.  Lightroom editing is stored in a special lightroom file

I think u r right, lightroom has its own database and u need to export the images if u want to view and edit them with other application.
This have advantages too: less disk space usage and (maybe) better performance

I absolutely LOVE Lightroom and it has quickly become an essential part of my digital workflow. Admittedly, it really comes into it's own for studio work, where many changes can be made globally - it's also great for keywording batches of similar images.

My only gripe is that it is slow to export as jpegs, especially when re-sizing. Apart from that, just love it!

i tried both lightroom and aperture, then I bought lightroom. It's simpler and (more important) faster.
diego

Lightroom has sped things up for me soooooo much! I rarely go in CS3  anymore unless I have some major isolated tweaking to do. And to workflow between CS3 and LR is seemless.

As for exif data.... you have the option to have a .xml sidecar file to be created if you want.

More importantly, LR is a database so finding files is sooooo easy (if you keyword them properly ;-)).

I use lightroom and I think it is great too. Other than the point Leaf stated (edits not visible outside of lightroom unless the file is exported) I find it very powerfull and easy to use.

I've been using it since beta. IMO, if you are shooting raw there is no substitute. Get it, learn it (very easy), enjoy.

but how do all you RAW shooters justify cataloging, key wording and editing images in a program that stores the info in a database all to it's own.  if you want to switch programs sometime down the lane you will have hundreds / thousands or hundreds of thousands of images which have lost their data ...

I used lightroom quite a bit in beta, but have since moved to using bridge.

Leaf,

Maybe I'm missing something when you say "lost their data". How is it lost? Metadata stays with the image ((you can set it up to create sidecar (sp?) metadata files if you like)) and simply exporting an image creates a file that you can bring into another program. This part is true with any raw processing program is it not? And if switching to another program sometime in the future is an issue, well wouldn't it always be an issue?

Sorry if I'm missing  your point Leaf, the way I see it is the info is always there to use or kick out if you want at any time for whatever reason.

ok, perhaps it has changed since i used it last (or i just never knew)

But i didn't know it stored the data in sidecar metadata files. I thought it was all stored in one monster lightroom file.

If it WAS all stored in one monster lightroom file, if you wanted to use another program then it would be a problem.
If it is stored in sidecar metadata files like is one of the industry standards, then it would be easy to switch programs.

Thank u everybody for ur opinions and advices
this forum is great :-)