Cwilson341 Loc: Central Florida

If you should decide to give Lightroom a try, Creative Live is running a full week of FREE training on Lightroom and Photoshop - May 15-20.

http://www.creativelive.com/photoshop-week?via=all-upcoming-classes-photography_4

katastrofa Loc: London, UK

I have tried DxO Optics Pro and Lightroom, and for me, DxO is much better. I can get the results that I need faster and with less effort. DxO Optics Pro has a 30 day free trial, try it and see for yourself.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I use LR6, but I'm not a slave to its catalog system. I have my own system for storing pictures, but I also use keywords. There are alternatives to LR, both free and not.

Free -
http://www.download3.co/ic/picasa/index.php?kw=%2Bpicasa
http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/the-best-photoshop-alternatives-that-are-totally-free-5974500
http://lightzoneproject.org/

Not free -
http://digital-photography-school.com/a-beginners-guide-to-choosing-the-right-post-production-software/
http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2015/03/23/best-photo-editing-software-photoshop-cc-and-7-photoshop-alternatives-tested/1/
http://www.redmondpie.com/best-adobe-photoshop-alternatives-for-windows-and-mac-list/

dkguill Loc: Elkhart, IN

IMHO...NO! LR is NOT the way to go!

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

I know the 2015 is confusing but that is when he CC version came out. The official title is Adobe Lightroom CC 2015. Actually 2015.10

mikeroetex Loc: Lafayette, LA

What do you have to lose (except a little time)? All the images are still on your PC in File Explorer.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

LOL! Actually Nikon didn't botch View NX, Nikon was licensing it from Nik. Nik sold to Google and Nikon wasn't able to continue the program. They moved to a (in my opinion) lesser capable version they named View NX-I.
At that time, I abandoned Nikon's software and moved to Adobe Lightroom. (Note: I purchased a disc with Lightroom on it and a year later Adobe came out with the cloud). I have been on the Adobe CC version since it's inception and have never regretted it.
As has been mentioned, you don't use the Microsoft (or Apple) file system to manipulate your images as it will mess them and Lightroom up. I use Lightroom to import each memory card and it files the images in a directory by the date the photo was taken according to the metadata, so you want to make SURE that the camera date and time are correctly set. Personally, I don't change the date and time when I change time zones as it (Might) confuse my filing system. However it would probably be fine. I have two 4tb drives dedicated to photos only (note the second drive is currently empty and the first is about 50% full after several years of use). If you want, you can download and try the CC version of LR/Photoshop for 30 days without charge.

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

I just spent a week at Texas School for Professional Photographers in Dallas. With one exception all the instructors used LR/Photoshop. We had 1,042 students and over 30 instructors from 45 states and 7 countries. The exception used Capture One. I was in Tony Corbell's advanced class and he uses LR/PS.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Personally agree with all you said with one exception - organizing you photos by date. While that is the default for LR I personally find using dates not very useful. I have no idea what pictures I took 2/15/2016 or any other date. The power of LR lets you set up a directory structure using text and date or any combination. For instance an upper directory can be 2107 with the sub directory "Smith wedding 2-25-17", Betty's graduation 7-3-17, etc . These names appear in the left pane and very visually readable. You can find most photos with minimal searching

If one does use dates then it's a almost a must option for keywords if you want to find say the smith's wedding. Not saying, dates are wrong but to emphasize how flexible the catalog structure can be.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

"IS LIGHTROOM THE WAY TO GO?"

I use Nikon Capture NX2 with Nik and Topaz to enhance some of my shots. I bought Lightroom but found it complicated to use.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

That's why I Keyword Tag every photo... (such as Nature Photography, Honeymoon Island,
These types of Location key words can be put in when you do your import and are in the "key word" area of the photo.
Then, when I develop the photos I can add key words like Birds, Bald Eagle or reptile, rattle snake or turtle or any other descriptive terms.

When I am looking for a type of photo, I can search on all of the key words for Honeymoon Island, or Key West or I can look for alligator and bring up every alligator picture that I have in Lightroom.
It makes cataloging extremely easy.. I like the date format (though you can import using any criteria) because using key words in the photos the date just gives me another search criteria. I know that I was in the Keys April 9 to 17 of 2016 so I can go into those dates to see every photo that I took then, or I can just search on Florida Keys or more specifically Marathon Key. However, searching on Florida Keys, Marathon Key would bring up photos from every visit I made to that key or those key.

As I said, your basic import key words can be specific to all of the images of that import then as you develop, you get more specific on each image.
YES, it takes some time and effort during the initial work but it saves hours a year or so later when you are looking for photos from that spot or trip.
Plus, you can always go back and add, change or delete key words from that library.

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

I know that everyone here swears by the LR cataloguing feature. Frankly, I couldn't care less about it. I put my pics where I want them BEFORE I open them in LR. If I move them, I simply tell LR where they are. It's easy and a LOT quicker than moving then within LR. Now before everyone attacks me, I'll exit this conversation. Just wanted you to know that you do NOT have to give up control of your images to LR.

Kuzano

Most importantly....

You are married.... bonded.... chained.... severely restricted as in no other options for managing files once you commit to light room.

Forget everything you knew or learned about other management systems.... particularly through your Operating System... be it Windows or Mac!

Period... but not the end of the report!!!

The sheer frustration of not starting out RIGHT in light room, and having to fix your mistakes.....unbelievable!!!!!!!

30 years of computer consulting here. Have taught and used myriad software programs.

LightRoom was the hardest to manage and ultimately the easiest to give up and stay away from. But admittedly, I thought I knew to much. The hardest thing about learning Light Room is knowing to much and having too much of your own ego getting into the learning process.

LightRoom is insurmountable if you think you can fudge Adobe's system. But that's Adobe Personified.

And remember the penalty for dropping out of CC. It costs one year of penalty if you sign up for Adobe CC and want to leave early. I dropped out after 3 months of serious effort on LightRoom.

I will add this. I followed Morganti youtube videos and I did consider LightRoom great on image editing, and I have used the PhotoShop/Bridge combo (Bridge is a better manager than LightRoom). In fact, I used Photoshop 6 thru CS2 and Bridge for a long period of time.

My main issue is the complete lack of flexibility in file management with LightRoom. By that, I mean they do not have all the bases of management covered, and they are indignantly inflexible in features other than their own. The worst of LightRoom is the Catalog style data management.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

The moving of files is probably the biggest problem people encounter when starting out with Lightroom, and it's probably the major reason that people drop the program.

Since Lightroom doesn't care just where the files are located (as long as you tell it where they are, which is what happens when you "import" a file). They can be moved within LR (so LR keeps track of where they are). If they are moved outside of LR, there is a way to tell LR where to find them. It's just an extra step in that case.

Personally I think the best thing to do is to have a folder hierarchy that you follow that defines where files will be found. If you download your files within that hierarchy, then import them into LR, you will never have to move them. Of course there's no problem copying them from that system to another location (other than using more disk space with duplicates).

If you want to use other editing programs there are ways to do that from within LR. You can define an external editor (in addition to Photoshop). If you send an image from LR to the external editor (or to Photoshop), when you save the image after editing, it gets imported back into LR (you can define a suffix that will be appended to the name so you know it was edited outside of LR). That means that the original and the edited copy are both in the LR catalog.

LR also allows you to organize your images through the use of sets and collections. You can set up a collection with a name that describes the subject, and put some images into it. The files can span multiple folders, and a given image can span multiple collections. Since it's all virtual, within the catalog, you're not making new copies of the images so the impact on the disk space is minimal.

As far as editing images is concerned, LR is pretty basic, and although Adobe has been adding features over the past few years, the capability of LR as an editor is probably similar to many other programs (+/- a feature or two here and there). The primary strength (in my opinion) of LR is the catalog and the ability to search by keywords and/or metadata. The secondary strength is the ability to use other editors and still retain the modified image in the catalog.

I am also a proponent of file name changing.
While LR doesn't care what the file name is (you can use the original camera 8.3 format name), I believe it's useful to rename your files with a descriptive name. True, you can find an image in LR through the keywords and/or metadata even if it has a random file name, but in that case searches are really limited to the use of LR. For my photos I use a combination of meaningful file names and a file hierarchy with meaningful folder names. That enables someone to find a photo in my pile even if they don't know how to use LR. They can use ordinary file searching techniques on the filename.