Just to clarify, or perhaps make things worse, ...
The 360 and 540 can be set to fire in PTTL wire-less mode (default) or as a dumb slave. The PTTL mode requires communication between flash and camera.
Dumb slave mode simply reacts to another light source. (sometimes even to fluorescent light flikering, etc...)

The later, if set, may flash off the pop-up flash but in many cases not result in affecting the captured image. i.e. the flash is syncing off the pre-flashes before the main flash is fired or desired. This mode is great if you have only one IR or radio flash unit, but want to slave several flashes of that one.

BTW, don't confuse this "slave" with the "Slave" mode mentioned in the above posts with Controller and Master modes. geeesh, photography terms are as badly overridden as computer terms. You never know what someone is talking about without a good amount of context and base knowledge.

The Adobe Lightroom probably has all the major specs, but as I understand it has a lot more non-destructive editing that can be done.
LR1.1 also slowed down with very few images in the catalog. LR2, supposedly goes pretty well with hundreds of thousands of photos.
Although in real life I think s starts to slow down bit after 30000+ I have no way to compare, but with under 50000 photos, it does seem slow with regard to its cataloging features.
I am no pro, and I have only used R2 for a week or so, but I like it. I found it difficult to use LR1.1.

If you have no need for the new "features" (i.e. eye candy), and LR1.1 is working well for you there is probably little or no advantage with the upgrade.

Yes there are different resolutions. I don't know how much that really matter, though.
I have the Intuous3, which I believe has some number of thousand of bits per inch and 1024 levels of sensitivity on the pen.
I don't really know if the x/y resolution makes much of a difference for me. I haven't used other drawing pads before this one.

Oddly, I don't notice more than about 8 to twelve levels of sensitivity when using photoshop. I don't know if it is the pen or Photoshop, but I certainly do not have more than a dozen noticeable steps of pressure difference when drawing. Generally I don't need more than that, but the few times I need a REALLY smooth transition, it just doesn't happen.

Note you also need to deal with response rate as well... I've heard of some graphics tablets not responding as quickly. So when drawing circles, for example, you can only get polygons because the tablet cannot keep up with your movements.

Anyway, you'll need to look at resolution (x,y), steps of pressure sensitivity, and if possible response rate (sadly, the latter is not usually noted in advertising, you'll have to look up reviews to see if any mention is made of it). Argh...

Well, I took the plunge and purchased Lightroom. The more I used it and read about what it could do, the more I found that it would work for me.
Still some annoyances, like simply deleting a folder of junk photos from disk is not possible (at least not that I've found).
But I suppose going forward, a proper workflow would eliminate some of that. (I just happen to find a lot of old stuff I could remove, but had to do so externally and re-sync)
Processing of many photos is also slower than I like, so their database could use a lot of optimization.
The Pick+Reject workflow is much easier than something like ACDSee which usually required several passes to make the same judgments.

Anyway, using with SilkyPix is not a smooth as I would like. ACDsee for example would let me select photos and send them to SilkyPix. And it would automatically detect new images when they appeeared. Nice when the software worked...
Although ACDsee was a nightmare to re-sync when images were removed externally!


Back on track...
I'll import files from card using lightroom, adding simple metadata and creating the backup copy.
I'll make a quick pass flagging to pick or reject and delete rejects.
I'll then "open in explorer" to open the folder containing the images, and drop that folder into SilkyPix.
I'll use SilkyPix to make mods and do my conversions.
Then from Lightroom I'll simply re-sync the folder to pick up the changes made from SilkyPix.

Sounds a bit kludgy, and I'm welcome to anyone else's suggestions for better workflow, but it really is not too bad.

I usually tag RAW only, So this method doesn't hamper my existing workflow. I know some people only tag the converted images so re-tagging could be intensive.
One downside of course is that Lightroom has the ability to stack images and this is not automatic by using a third party tool. But if you save your converted images in the same folder, you can manually stack them.
I'll have to see what the APIs can do and see if a plug-in can be made to create stacks from similar image names. Stacks seem like a useful tool, but don't know how much I'd make use of them. I normally place converted images in a subfolder, JPEGs, JPEG800x600, TIFFS, etc...

Not sure about your question on exporting to lower res JPEGs. Lightroom will allow you to specify the size and bit-depth. I'll often export to full size as well as to small websize images. That alone does not require dumping out to PhotoShop.

Anyway, I'm still very new to Lightroom, but so far it is starting to grow on me.

As for mere RAW editing, I do like the imitated gradient and the spot repair tools. I found myself using them more than expected in just the few days of testing. Not sure if it is enough to convert me away from SilkyPix.

Congrats!
I've just started looking at Lightroom for its non-RAW features but played with the Adobe RAW controls for some time. As much as I would like to use a single product, I feel no draw to stop using SilkyPix.
I'm just hoping I can find a way to make the two work well together.

Are you doing B&W at all? I don't find SilkyPix to be good in that area at all -- but then I am horrible at B&W to begin with. :-0 Just interested if you found a method that works or still have to bring into Photoshop.

Not a bad suggestion. I assumed the guy who installed it knew better than to have conflicting software installed. Maybe not?...

I am always for specialization when it comes to security. Often you get a company who specializes in virus scanning and thinks it can expand to include a home grown firewall -- they often fall flat. But if one can handle both well, then great! "Zone Alarm Internet Security" includes Kaspersky's virus software which was a pretty well respected technology. This is one case where I feel pretty good about the combination.

Unfortunately ZoneAlarm is not "simple" to use and maintain, regardless of the simplficiation bells and whistles they've added.



By the way, I've been looking up some independent testing sites, and a security program called "Online Armor" seems to rank pretty well, even the free version ranks higher than a lot of others.

You can see one of the results charts here:
http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-challenge/results.php
Some of the results require interpretation and further understanding of what the tests entailed, but generally that one looks worth investigating when my subscription runs out for ZoneAlarm.

Is that the free ZoneAlarm (firewall only), or ZoneAlarmPro (firewall only) or ZoneAlarm Internet Security (firewall with virus/spam blocking) -- I'll assume the free basic ZoneAlarm.

Most likely you need to tell ZoneAlarm that AVG is allowed to access the internet. If ZoneAlarm did not ask you about access (or if you accidentally chose 'no'), you can go to the Programs panel within ZoneAlarm and set the AVG executable to be allowed to access the internet.
I haven't used the free one in many years, but it should not be hard to find.

other than that, it is probably true that AVG is working as expected... it just thinks you are not connected to the internet and cannot get its updates.

Oh, plenty not to like about Lightroom, not the least of which is its speed to get any task done. Although, yes it has some nice features as well. But I'm not really looking to bash or commend Lightroom's features other than possible workability with third party RAW editors such as SilkyPix.

I have sort of resolved myself to putting up with Lightroom's issues since I really haven't seen anything better (other than ACDSee which has gone down the proverbial crapper since their last upgrade).
That and I have some naive hopes that a company like Adobe will continue to actively improve their product.

Still, if I can't work SilkyPix half-way decently into the workflow I'll probably continue looking for another solution.

If anyone has other suggestions for cataloging files (or even full DAM software), I'm willing to give them a try.

iView is no more - has been bought and probably destroyed by Microsoft. From the couple of days I tried to make it work, I became quickly dis-enchanted with the product.

Does Picasa understand yet that multiple sub-directories may exist with the same name yet be totally unrelated? i.e. if I consistently convert my raw files to a subdir named "JPEG", I may end up having hundreds of JPEG folders.
Last time I used Picasa, all of those images were thrown together under a single group "JPEG". Which made finding my images less than friendly.
With eight years of storage, I probably wont go back and change my categorization methods to fit the software.

Maybe I'll give that a try, since I'm pretty much starting from scratch... I'd certainly rather spend my money on the upcoming SilkyPix upgrade than on Lightroom.

Anyone use SilkyPix in combination with Lightroom and have a good workflow?

I used to use ACDSee for my cataloger, but since their recent upgrade it has been a nightmare of database corruption and software crashes. I finally lost my whole catalog. Backups wont restore to it. Argh!
(OK, all at once now... awwwwww! )

So I'm looking at Lightroom. Down side is that you cannot launch RAW files into a third party application. Lightroom will send TIFFS or PSD files to another application, but that just isn't the same.

It is quite a bit slower than ACDSee, but otherwise I am growing to like Lightroom. I am just hoping to keep SilkyPix in the workflow for the actual photo processing.

Only been using Lightroom for a couple of days, but it seems detecting of new files, folders created outside of Lightroom and the removal of files and folders within Lightroom is extremely tedious and potentially error prone.

Hopefully someone has some good tips.

Thanks