Lightroom 2 - stand alone editing?

An article in the March 2009 Shutterbug suggests that Lightroom 2 can be used as a stand alone editing program. Another recent article suggested that it can be used along with Photoshop Elements.
Yet, when I spoke to the customer service center at Adobe last fall they told me that is can only be used with full Photoshop CS. So who is right? Is anyone using it as a stand alone? Reasons to or not to?

I use LR on my lap top for travelling. The new version can do a lot of good stuff and for many images it may be all you need to process RAW images. However if any complicated adjustments like those that need layers need to be done you will need Photoshop. You can send an image from LR to Elements or CS, however, you can do more in CS than Elements.

That customer service rep.'s advice was misleading.
Either Elements or the full version of PS (or any other image editor) will work fine in conjunction with Lightroom.

You can use Lightroom as a 'standalone' image editor for RAW files, if you wish.
The full version of Photoshop CS4 (w/Adobe Camera Raw) has the exact same RAW editing capablities as Lightroom.
Lots of folks use Elements or CS4 to perform further editing with the converted RAW files from Lightroom.

Different folks have different editing workflows. Speaking for myself, I can't imagine performing 100% of my editing in a RAW image editor. I like working with layer masking, adjustment layers, etc., etc. that aren't available in either Lightroom or ACR.

In essence, if I owned Lightroom, I would definitely own PS Elements to augment the editing workflow.
Using PS CS4, I have no need for Lightroom at all. Lightroom is primarily designed for photographers who shoot and edit lots of images and have need of digital asset management capabilities (e.g. cataloguing, sorting, keywording). However, the Bridge in CS4 does a very decent job of that function.

Hope that helps.

I do (almost) all my processing in Lightroom. There is a very rare occasion where I can't do what I want and fire up another app, but I can't even remember the last time I needed to do that.

In fact, you dont even need PS or Elements, you could just as well use any other editing program.

I believe Wim is right. I believe you can open a photo from LR into other editing apps. beyond PS/E.

I suspect what Shutterbug is getting at is that with the latest incarnations of LR/ACR, there are some local adjustment capabilities built in. Depending on what the photo may need and what you may want to do with/to it, LR/ACR could be a one stop shop.

Personally, I don't think the local adjustment capabilities of LR/ACR are fulsome enough so I use (currently) CS3 in conjunction with LR. I'll do as much as I can to the RAW file in LR then open it in PS to do the rest.

Under the options menu you can set different apps to export to for further editing. I go from Lightroom to Gimp on my laptop and use it with Phototoshop CS2 on my desktop. Normally I just use lightroom on my laptop for shooting tethered to a network drive.

I use both Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3. For some images LR2 has all the tools I need for initial editing but its big advantage is non-destructive editing of RAW files prior to conversion. You can do those same edits in Adobe RAW converter but that lacks Lightroom's cataloging function. I have a friend who uses only LR2 for editing and printing and it does meet his needs. It is a matter of individual needs and workflow but Lightroom can be used as the only editing tool if it meets your needs.