The Red Ferret Journal Product of the Year 2007: Software – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Although pitched at professional photographers, Lightroom has got so many things right that it really deserves to be on everyone’s shopping list if they have any kind of interest in digital photography. The $299.00 program costs many times more than most alternative products, but comes with the Adobe heritage, and what’s more comes with a user interface that is literally a breath of fresh air in today’s clutter-suck complicated world of computer software.

Adobe has basically ripped the image manipulation components out of industry standard Photoshop, clothed them in a mind-bogglingly easy and oh-so-useful interface and thought about, really thought about, the work-flow process of tweaking, storing and sharing images. From the simple slider and sidebar analogy which lets you pile through a huge amount of work in a short time, through to the superb library, cataloging and web gallery features, the program is a delight.

Yes you can get free or sub-$50.00 image manipulation programs in a gazillion places on the net, but if you want the Rolls Royce of photo management programs and you really care about getting the best results out of your digital camera, this is the software you need.