After more than a year of “public preview” and several years of internal development, Adobe has shipped Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is a workflow application designed specifically for digital photographers, particularly photographers who shoot RAW captures, although Lightroom also can handle RGB JPEGs, TIFFs and PSD files and use its processing controls to adjust them as well as RAW files.

This story started last spring when I received a phone call from Dan (aka Dano, as in “Book ’em, Dano”) Steinhardt from Epson, asking me if I might be interested in doing a shot for Epson. At the time, he was his usual circumspect self, hinting that the “thing” I might be shooting was bigger than a breadbox and would sit on a desk—yeah, like I didn’t assume it was a printer—but he steadfastly refused to allow the discussion to progress to further speculation on my part. I said yes.

Within the field of photography and digital imaging, a number of debates are argued by users and experts: Nikon versus Canon, Mac versus Windows, zoom versus prime lens, RAW versus JPEG—the list goes on and on. Add to that 8-bit versus 16-bit. What’s the difference? Is the controversy useful or viable? After reading our primer, you’ll have a better idea about where to stand on the issue.

Millions of photographers are purchasing digital cameras every year, and all of them seem to understand the direct correlation between a camera’s sensor and the resulting quality of their photographs. That knowledge is common, but too often cursory.