We’re joined this week by our good friend Mikkel Aaland, who, as Martini Hour Faithful know, was there at the inception of the original, offline Martini Hour. But in addition to his going olive-for-olive with me and Deke in Las Vegas, Mikkel has also authored two amazingly beautiful Lightroom books. And it’s a great time to talk about Lightroom, because the beta of Lightroom 3 is currently available for download at Adobe Labs. So after you’re done enjoying this show, you can go check it out for yourself. Because we imagine it’s much more interesting for you to listen to us be loungy fools, then go try the products we talk about for yourself!

Here’s more raw data from this week’s show:

Mikkel has been paying close attention to raw processing for some time. In fact, during our visit he and Deke do one of those strolls down technology-memory lane. Now the rest of you can experience my fear-meets-fascination at listening to these two passionate experts go at it. (Don’t worry, it’s OK. They’re not fighting, just enthusiastically exchanging ideas.) Mikkel was around at the inception of Lightroom, and on the ground floor of photographers who were consulted for how to make it suit the needs of raw shooters. It’s a great story about the inception of a terrific product. And it’s fun to hear Mikkel and Deke talk about the evolution of raw processing.

Mikkel’s Lightroom projects were books that documented the travels of several pro photographers who took Adobe’s photo-management-processing tool out into the wild (first in Iceland, then Tasmania) to test and shoot. If Deke weren’t listening, I might say they are the most beautiful books I’ve ever worked on.

And for the toast of the week, Mikkel encourages us to raise our gin-and-tonics to the grandfather of all things good in our technical lives, Bill Atkinson.

How can you resist this foray into software, digital photography, and international adventure? You can’t so here’s the regular-quality (128kbps) audio file. You can stream, or for best results, right-click and choose Download or Save. Be sure to download, don’t stream. And don’t forget the usual suggestion to subscribe via iTunes.

Cheers until next week, Martini Hour hipsters!