Yes, We Still Love ACR

As we get set to do the final push on Mikkel's Photoshop CS3 RAW book, this news via Adobe's John Nack is certainly timely. Although the ubiquitous Lightroom vs. Aperture debate rages on (and sometimes clouds our perception), turns out most professional photographers polled by Infotrends still use the classic Adobe Camera Raw/Bridge/Photoshop combo for their RAW workflow.

No surprise really, considering the fact that most photographers believe they need Photoshop anyway, and there's no added cost associated with using ACR for RAW processing once Photoshop is installed. ACR gives you RAW processing comparable to Lightroom's develop module, and speed and functionality improvements made in Bridge 2.0 have improved the experience. (According to Derrick, what makes the process viable is that, "Now, Bridge actually operates at the same speed I do.")

I see anecdotal evidence of ACR's popularity all around these days. I've watched first-hand as Mikkel returned from his Lightroom immersion, to really get in the flow of the Bridge-ACR-Photoshop process while revising his book. Deke McClelland's final session at Photoshop World, "Forget Levels, Forget Curves, Correct Everything in Camera Raw", had a large, engaged audience of both attendees and industry experts. And just this week, Derrick's got a great post at The Digtial Story about how ACR helped him effectively and efficiently process images from his interview with Adobe's Mark Dahm.