From my playing with Lightroom it would seem to me that if you are a "straight" photographer, light room would give you just about everything you need to make an unmanipulated image from a digital file. LR's forte is the ability to handle and organize large numbers of digital files quickly and efficiently. It also had the advantage in that its' editing does not change the original file, thus conserving disk space.

If your end product will be incorporated into some graphic, then photoshop would be the way to go.

That's just my opinion. There are others out here who may be able to improve, disprove or approve of my thoughts.

Joe,

Yes... I'm pretty much a "straight" photographer. I'll play with USM, contrast, etc. On rare occassion, I'll dodge/burn. And in those few instances where I shoot color, I may play with that a bit.

I guess my reason for wanting to avoid CS2/3 is... I don't care much about all the other software in the suite. Graphics isn't my thing. Photography is.

BTW, I enjoyed your website. Good pics! Good humor!

Just saw this thread. If you grew up with b&w and feel comfortable with zones, just give LightZone (http://www.lightcrafts.com) a try. They offer a 30 day trial version, and if you are running Linux google for 'LightZone for Linux' - it's free and faster than the Windoze version (because Linux is faster :D )