LightZone | Open-source digital darkroom software for Windows/Mac/Linux. Just remembered, it's now free. And because it's Java, it's available on multiple platforms. During my experiments back then, it was quite a cool alternative for Linux. Specifically, the contrast control through a digital zone system is quite cool, and the program saves JPEG previews and the editing steps directly in the previews, so you can easily exchange them between computers. Attention: currently, Lightzone still requires a license key. The whole licensing stuff still needs to be removed, but the source is already on Github, it's just a matter of time.
bildbearbeitung
Using hardware controllers with Lightroom | Valokuvaaja Max Edin. Holy-Moly, that's a great idea. Simply connect a MIDI controller to Lightroom and control all the sliders via rotary knobs. That almost makes you want to get one of these controllers just to try it out.
Pixelmator. Cheaper, smaller and visually much more appealing than Photoshop Elements Editor. And it has the Healing Brush (and an interesting alternative, where you simply paint a selection and then heal this entire selection). And supports Lion features - so versions, full screen etc. I got it, PSE will probably be filed under "paying tuition" in the round file.
Pixelmator 2 Sneak Preview. Hmm. Sounds like it could be a good alternative to Photoshop Express - the Healing Tool and content-aware Fill would be exactly the two features I use in PSE (and which are not provided by LR or other tools). I really should try it out - the over 1G disk space usage just for PSE is somehow quite annoying ...
Fairytales
Sometimes the differences between what we see, what the camera captures, and what we imagine are too fundamentally different. Digital enables the adjustment of the appearance to the imagination - because photography is not always just a simple representation of what the chip sees. Images taken with the Sony NEX-3 and the Leica Elmar 50/2.8. Edited with Lightroom.