Thinking about Lightroom?

Question

A year or so ago I felt a real need for more editing power than iPhoto provided. So I checked out Aperture and Lightroom. While I wanted to be able to retain the thousands of keywords I had assigned to my photos and therefore tended to favor Aperture I'd heard so many good things about Lightroom that I ended up going with LR3.
Six months later I have come to regret this decision in many ways. While LR 3 is a very powerful nondestructive editing tool, and while I would have to say that the quality of my images has improved greatly since switching to it, many, many things about LR 3 are very annoying.
I won't bore you with a blow by blow but will simply say that compared to iPhoto LR 3 seems to be an application designed by committee in much the same way as the camel is said to be a horse designed by committee. For while it has many powerful features they in a very real and very aggravating sense to not seem cut from the same cloth so to speak. It's as if a group from South America designed the Slide Module, a group from Russia designed the Develop Module, etc. The different modules "kind of work together" but the underlying structure and organization often just doesn't seem to get along.
If you are the kind of photographer who enjoys playing with computers more than working with photographs all of this is not necessarily bad news. LR 3 is a very complicated program and it will provide you with endless hours of trying to figure out how things work, or occasionally, trying to figure out why some things just won't.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to spend your time making images, the dues to be paid to join the LR ranks are very high, very high indeed, and for awhile you will be spending far more time and energy figuring out Lightroom than you will spend improving your photography skills.

Answer 1

Yes, they will transfer across to the new version of Lr when you install it.