A Few Workflow Questions

Question

I shoot Raw or Raw plus jpg and I am not yet clear on how to include Lens Correction in my workflow. In the past, I have typically opened in LightRoom and set white point, exposure and black level to start. Occasionally a crop and straighten might be required. Then I'd typically reduce noise and sharpen the image. In this new era, where exactly do I use Lens Profile Correction?
A another question is that there seems to be a lack of richness in the ACR 6.1 version of lens correction, I therefore, much prefer to us CS5 Filter to make those corrections. From LR this would require an Export to CS5; when and how should this be done?

Answer 1

The lens correction happens at very early stage of the raw processing pipeline. The subsequent raw processing steps are all made "lens correction" aware so that you can combine them anyway you want. Precisely because ACR/LR is able to handle the lens correction at such an early stage, they are the best place to do lens correction (for vignetting for example), compared with the LC filter in PS CS5. When processing raw, the LC is also more predictable and subject less to what the user might have done to the image in the past, such as cropping, scaling, color transform, on-camera LC etc.
The LC in ACR/LR emphasizes the auto/batch operation for its target users; The LC filter in PS CS5 gives more controls to the user. Overtime, I would expect the two take the best of each other.