3kramd5 said:
distant.star said:
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I suspect most users see it as an image manipulation program with an attached database program they can largely ignore.
You think most people just open, edit, export, and forget?
YES! This is exactly the way I'd like to use LR. As a raw converter + image file editor. I have about 200.000 raw images so far, adding between 15k and 20k every year. Everything is sorted nicely into well-named folders. Ever since MS opened up on the earlier 8.3 naming convention this is quite easy and well structured.
My top folder structure is by year (YYYY) and within year folders are named YYYYMMDD_name_of_event_or_scene_captured.
If Lightroom would write the keywords I assign into each file [RAW and if i SAVE that raw after editing as jpg, the keywords should also go into the header of the jpg file. EXPORTING is something my counrty does really well, shippping stuff to other parts of the world. On my PC I OPEN files, I EIDT theam, and then I SAVE them otr use SAVE AS ....
MS Windows search is also much since Win 7 and allows me to easily find keywords in file headers. It works with all my Excel files, my Powerpoint presentations, m,y Word documents. Just not with my RAWs. Those need to be IMPORTED and EXPORTED and what the heck.
And if I want to find all images with Unckle Bob or Auntie Ruth in them, I can use free of charge Picasa Image Editor. It has an absolutely astounding FACE RECOGNITION. Works miraculously well, without a fat CATALOGUE, without IMPORT screens and EXPORTS to China or the cloud [although with Google you have to reyll be careful not to use the Picasa web albums, otherwise Uncle Bobs images are all over the web).
In conclusion: anno 2015 there is no need whatsoever for a freakin' fat, cludgy and unwieldy Lightroom database any longer. Adobe cannot even call a "database" a databse, but needs to call it a frekin' "CATALOGUE" ... fully in line with all their other weirdo, non-standard, ultra-proprietory ways.
Yes, I do dislike the basic LR approach. It reminds me of Microsoft Outlook - that black sheep of all MS Office apps. Microsoft handling of Word, Excel, Powerpoint are intuitive to me. MS Outlook is not intuitive - it is a big, bloody mess because of that stupid convoluted, mega-fat Outlook.pst file [probably also some database]. I would greatly prefer having each item just as a file [raw files, jpgs as well as every single email-message] in named folders. That way I am in charge, not some software supplier! I do know, where specific data resides on my system [logically, not physically]. Adobe and Apple and increasingly MS try to hide everything from users and make us all mere tenants on our own hard- and software, rather than landlords. Of course, tenants have to pay monthly rent. That's the grand scheme Adobe is pushing on us. And I am pushing back.
Whether Adobe will be successful with their strategy remains to be seen. As far as I am concerned, I use LR 5.7 as long as I don't buy new cameras and will then re-evaluate available software options. Luckily there are other options - not least Canon's own DPP.
RANT END.
What I do like about LR [ever since LR 3] is having to just use 1 program for RAW conversion and image edits. I purchased Photoshop once, opened it once, and deleted it from the disk. Totally unusable. LR is usable as an image editor. Anything I cannot do with it - don't care. Luckily I am just an amatuer and don't have to "beautify" faces and skin or "liquify" body fat ... beyond recognition.