Okay, now that Adobe has dropped its pricing for Lightroom with vs 4 being about half the price of vs 3, I'm getting more tempted to give it a whirl, does anybody have any good recommendations for user guides be they websites, videos or books?
The kelby stuff on Lightroom is pretty much the best source. Adobe has some pretty good stuff in their development section as well. llamafur: Lightroom is more like photoshop elements (for photography) and bridge. The include all the tools for common photo correction and manipulation and the ability to apply changes to multiple images. Since starting using Lightroom, I only use photoshop on about 1% of my images (mainly for complicated cloning). It is also non-destructive so it does not alter your original files, it merely catalogs all the edits in a database and only applies them when you export the files. IMHO it's the best thing Adobe has ever done for photographers.
Check out Luminous Landscape video tutorial since it's still 25% off for now (as it's unfinished still, but downloadable in parts). I don't really like Kelby stuff, some of them are ok, but for example them advocating not using soft proofing isn't something I can understand.
Here's a free resource coming up at the end of the month: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/lightroom-4-fundamentals-laura-shoe Might be a bit inconvenient depending on your timezone but it could be useful.
Okay downloaded the trial version to give it a shot, so far quite impressed, Forced myself to use it over the weekend instead of just going back to elements, but the library component is so much better and quicker in lightroom I can see me using it just for that. Was also quite good to use its tether support for a still life shot. Going to have to do more reading on applying changes to small areas and not globaly, and for instance only burning shadows and not burning everything with the adjustment brush.
Lightroom is awesome, I couldn't go back to using software that isn't based on non-destructive editing.
+1 for Lightroom It's absolutely fantastic. I don't even use Photoshop any more. Of course, if you do heavy manipulation Photoshop is still the way to go but if like me you just adjust colour, levels, contrast, sharpening, cropping and maybe some minimal cloning / touching up it's a no brainer. Like others have said the non destructive nature of Lightroom is a revelation. In the click of a button you can reset a heavily edited image straight back to its 'out of camera' state. I think the learning curve is better than Photoshop as well, IMO