The Case for LR over Classic?

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I have pretty much made the switch to Lightroom. I organized my images by year/month/date. I upload my "best" images to flicker. I am a ruthless culler of my images the same day (90% of the time) I take them, only saving a few for editing.

I don't keep collections in LR Classic... but I do keep collections of the best images in a folder, so that works well with Lightroom. The folder for my trip to Sax-Zim bog is under 2023. My favorite Macro images for each year have their own folder in that year.

I do most of my editing in LR, but anything complex I send to Photoshop.

To each their own!
 
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RecalcitrantRon said:
So I just watched Matt's video (see below) and I am intrigued. I like the idea of ditching the catalogs and everything that goes with them. This should also allow me to easily use a NAS for my photo storage and access the photos from either my desktop or laptop. Has anyone switched over? One question I have is if there is no catalog, how does Lightroom non-destructively edit photos? Are we back to using sidecar files (which I have never been a fan of)?

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I saw Matt's video when he released it and this has been an interesting conversation. I think I may be an outlier in this but I am stuck with a catalog I definitely do not want as LR is missing many features of LrC that are critical to me. These features all lie in the area of metadata. I rely on hierarchical labels/ tags, geotag data and Map, face tagging (haven’t heard anything about this either way I suppose), the import processes, I think I am still missing something from this list but you get the idea. I would also be frustratedto lose pluggins. Adobe's "new" LR is still crippled compared to LrC. Adobe shows no signs of backfilling these capabilities into LR either.

Matt definitely uses LR/LrC differently than I do.

So, getting rid of the catalog is awesome, but unless metadata is addressed by Adobe, LR remains DOA.
 
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Brett B said:
I saw Matt's video when he released it and this has been an interesting conversation. I think I may be an outlier in this but I am stuck with a catalog I definitely do not want as LR is missing many features of LrC that are critical to me. These features all lie in the area of metadata. I rely on hierarchical labels/ tags, geotag data and Map, face tagging (haven’t heard anything about this either way I suppose), the import processes, I think I am still missing something from this list but you get the idea. I would also be frustratedto lose pluggins. Adobe's "new" LR is still crippled compared to LrC. Adobe shows no signs of backfilling these capabilities into LR either.

Matt definitely uses LR/LrC differently than I do.

So, getting rid of the catalog is awesome, but unless metadata is addressed by Adobe, LR remains DOA.
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It's one of those "do you need those features" things. Me…I use keywords but beyond that I organize by year and either location or trip or whatever seems appropriate at the time and I can do all of that in LR as well as LrC. The lack of plugins is a problem for me…but the workaround is go to PS and then the plug in, and in the longer term I think plugins will come since if Open in Photoshop works Open in Whatever else should be pretty easy on the desktop side. The lack of sufficient space without paying more for cloud storage is an issue button really an insurmountable one for me. I don't use maps or geotag data or face tagging at all…and would miss the rename on import option but that's an easy workaround as well. My personal guess is that most of the still missing features in LR will be added to both the cloud and local tabs and at some point LrC will go into maintenance only mode…whether that's in 2024 or 2025 or later I have no idea. The collections vs albums/folders is just naming, and I think that Smart Albums will come along as well but who knows when. The number of missing features keeps going down over time…Adobe decided that from a get it done standpoint they just needed to release and then update LR but get it into the wild and the gap has narrowed considerably.

I am looking at reorganizing all my synced collections so that they make more sense when viewed in LR on the iPhone or iPad…but that's just a bit of housekeeping for me. The only show stopper for me at this point is plugins and even that I could use the workaround if I had to.

I still don't understand the hatred for the catalog…the data has to be kept somewhere and whether it's in the catalog, .xmp files, or both is really irrelevant to me…and the "don't muck with the image files except in LR isn't much of an issue either. The catalog is just another file to the OS and it gets backed up every time I exit LR and also via various Time Machine and other backup routines.
 
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Question:
In Bridge when the folder contains a large amount of photos, browsing them isn’t possible.
Vs. LRC, after waiting for the 1:1 previews to render, I can scoll through all images with ease.

How is Lightroom local in this regard?
 
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