Maybe, just maybe, Lightroom is a great product. But I don't know why. So many people say that Lightroom is an essential tool for photographs but I really think it isn't. It's more an essential pain in the ass.

It is a catalog of you collection. But it is actually not your collection. Ok... So it can't be used like a normal picture viewer. That sucks. If you move a file or folder Lightroom get's dumb. Ok, it says that the file is gone, which is kinda ok, but it doesn't say somehting like "youre file is gone but there's another one over there". No. You have to synchronize (which takes a lot of time) to find the file. Oh, and if you created a new folder inside a folder which is already in Lightroom it just isn't there. Argh!

Maybe I just don't get it but what actually can Lightroom do? Browsing pictures? Use FastStone. Much much faster (ok, FastStone uses the embedded jpeg but you can switch to the real raw with a keystroke). Tagging your pictures? Bridge does that also or even Picasa and Picasa finds people in photos and can tag them automatically.

So, then there is the editing. Ok, you can edit a bunch of pictures in one move. That's kinda nice, but is that worth the trouble?

If someone can gibe me a good reason for Lightroom, please tell me. Right now for me it's more like a fast car with one missing tire.