Dust removal / cropping batch processing

Right now I am using DPP, which is fine if I want to do general things like saturation and other minor adjustments on a single image. But, when I am shooting a time lapse I often have a couple hundred frames to batch process (a few times it was over a thousand) More then once I have run into a dust bunny that I could not batch process out in DPP.

Will lightroom allow you batch process out dust spots? What about batch cropping images?

One more question... I am using adobe CS3, will I need to update this as well if I decided to use lightroom 3 for my 5DmkII files?

First of all, yes Lightroom gives you the Synch tool that makes such things quick as long as the spot is in the same place in each frame.

I believe, though, that you can do the same thing in CS3 -- just open all in the series in Camera Raw, apply spot cloning tool to the first one, then Select All, and then do the synch to all. It's the same as in Lightroom, just a different interface.

As to Lightroom 3 and CS3, you don't need to update Photoshop unless you want Camera Raw to be totally compatible with LR3. LR 3 has updated processing and added tools which won't "synch" with the Camera Raw version of CS3. Whether that matters to you is, well, up to you. Lightroom is designed to give you and efficient workflow that covers just about everything you would use Bridge and Camera Raw for, except some of the special things that Bridge can do to automate some things with the Photoshop Editor (HDR, blending, panos, and the Image Processor, for example).

Camera Raw, though, is the same processor that Lightroom contains (updated by LR3) so whether you want to use it on occasion is totally up to you but will tend to be separate from anything you do in LR3 if you stay with CS3. Lightroom has the Edit in Photoshop function which opens the image in the Photoshop editor with LR edits applied as an actual image (tiff or psd) and so bypasses the Camera Raw plug-in -- the new image copy is automatically imported and kept in the LR library.

FYI, I've stuck with CS3 without any issues.