In the days of film, photographers that were not shooting with large format cameras (4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x 10, or larger), had to use consistent lighting and exposure for the entire roll of film in order to ensure quality negatives to print from.  With digital cameras, no consistency is required for, but it does help your work flow if you try to maintain at least some sense of order to your shooting.  Shooting using similar exposure and lighting enables one to make your pictures more uniform.  If you are doing event, wedding, or commercial work, this will save time. 

Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom enable one to "batch process" large numbers of images in short time.  Batch processing is not the best way to produce quality work, but it does help speed up the work.  I tend to see batch processing as building the infrastructure to a housing development.  You don't have to rely on it if you choose to live elsewhere, but when it is not there, you may find your car stuck in the mud.  Batch processing is just another tool within Photoshop.


I do not batch process for color correction, sharpening, or creating my psychedelic work.  I do batch process to add tags and key words to items that are going to be posted on the web.