russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

I have been organizing my photos for 20 years using Windows Explorer.

To edit my photos and videos, depending on what I want to do, how fast I want to do it, and how big I want the resulting product to be, I use Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 5 Beta, Corel PaintShop Pro X6, Corel Photo-Paint X6, Corel Draw! X6, Corel VideoStudio Pro X6, and sometimes even Word 2010, which has some really cool and easy picture frames.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Did not look at the article but I do not use a program to organize, just Windows Explorer. I also use Allway Sync to manage multiple and redundant backups.

For editing I mainly use Picture Window Pro and Capture NX2. I have many of the other editing programs (PS Elements, Lightroom, Corel and others) but they are not as easy to use.

My post processing is minimal - mainly dust removal (I scan negatives a lot) and some exposure and contrast adjustment as well as occasional leveling and a little cropping.

rcurrie Loc: Kingsport, TN

I use Lightroom 4 and love it. It is great for organization and has powerful post processing features. You can do all posting processing needed on most photos.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

But I am, and I second the ACDsee Pro6 recommendation.
I've used ACDsee since it was freeware.
SOO many useful features.
ACDsee also has pretty good editing capabilities, but I don't use it as I have Adobe CS6 for that.
Also started to use CameraBits PhotoMechanic for sorting.
Really fast, important thing since I have a D800 and it takes forever to see thumbnails with ACDsee.
Absolutely stable program, unlike ACDsee, which will occasionally tell me it is shutting down ( probably because I'm on a server) doesn't happen at home.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I don't know who wrote the article but putting any Serif product in the same league with the others of that list is absurd.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

I agree the way to go. I have 248K files on 4 external HD all backed up and LR knows where all of the photos are located

Brenda IS Scottish Loc: GOLDEN Colorado

My vote is for Adobe 4 then upgrade to 5 when it is released. lightroom is wonderful! I do my initial editing in it, and it also allows you to set up keyword seachers on ever photo saving you time later. You can specify where your files are stored and make a backup copy of your files during inport for archiving..WONDERFUL PORGRAM. I Took a class on it at my local CC, and it was the best 300 I have ever spent on photography

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

The cataloging in LR is effective and works well if you use nothing but LR all the time, but until you can get a good grasp of it through taking classes or just beating yourself up with it daily for quite a while, it's actually hard to work in - especially compared to something like Windows Explorer which unfortunately lacks most cataloging and all keyword features but does copy/paste, export, import, or cut/paste immediately and show you instantly where the file is.

Lots of people are on here complaining about not knowing where their photos went, why some seem to vanish in LR but they can see them on Windows Explorer, why some are darkened but others are bright, or asking why when they make changes to a file and then open it with another program those changes aren't there (lack of exporting first), etc.

I can sympathize with them because I find that I must slow myself dramatically and read every menu choice carefully before acting to make sure I don't delete something important, and invest a lot of thinking/choice making/typing into importing and exporting when I'm working with 200+ irreplaceable photos that must be imported, cherry picked to a lower quantity and put into subfolders, edited in those subfolders, exported from LR to LR in a different format and sometimes into different sub-sub-folders, and finally touched up in another software before uploading through an FTP client. The "Sync Folders" button is my most used friend in LR4 to try to keep a handle on where everything is and went. And this is all without adding any kind of keywords, key phrases, etc.

I used Photoshop for a little while and found that I really liked Adobe Bridge, which oddly isn't what they put in LR4. It would have been beneficial to standardize between all Adobe products with independent Bridge included with all packages. They should have included Elements and LR into that standardization but they didn't and I can't imagine why.

Bridge does everything that the LR4 library does but is more common sense and file tree friendly. LR library is a built-in proprietary system and I don't really like that control hanging over me because I work with several editing packages for things that LR doesn't do or doesn't do well, and moving around those programs requires telling LR4 to go find what I was doing outside of it with "Sync Folder" instead of it just showing me what's on the hard drive. I'm just annoyed by that all the time.

I personally haven't found the perfect organizing system yet but I felt Bridge is pretty close because it's a Windows Explorer type tree-based organizer on massive steroids with enormous flexibility that essentially stands on its own. But even if I had one, I'd still have to fight the LR4 or LR5 cataloging system if I wanted to keep using LR.