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Stacks, why bother?

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tspear

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Question, after using Lr for a while and seeing the stacks auto created for merged images, I have come to the question. Why bother?
Basically, stacks are only useful in the unfiltered views for all photos or a specific album. So they only help when scrolling through images, not very useful when managing 20K images.

As a result I created this issue over on Adobe: https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...deas/p-search-filter-on-stacks/idi-p/12558985
However, now I wonder. Was I hasty? Am I missing something?

Tim
 
Go on a trip where you cannot readily connect to the net.
Months before the cloud version's release, I did exactly that as a test case. 6042 photos to be exact. The workflow outline on pages 5-10 of Edit Like a Pro and the order of the book was decided on that trip, except the sync waited till I got home as the hotel wifi was awful and I was on vacation so didn't want to spend every night sorting out photos! It was before version 1, so there weren't as many features as there are now, and there were a lot more bugs!

Everything got imported every night or two. Everything from that vacation dropped into an album, or I could have used an album per day. I did a quick skim through and flagged my favorites and rejected the duds. I added odd keywords in bulk to remember names of locations. Filtered just the flagged ones and did rough edits and dropped them in a shared album for friends/family back home. If I shared on social, I added a keyword to remind me. If there were photos that needed merging (this was before LR had merge), they went into an album called @Merge. That's it.

When I got home, I started back at the beginning of the workflow, with the exception of needing to add the photos. Everything synced to the cloud. Anything that didn't have a star rating was yet to be assessed, any keepers either needed editing or their edits needed tweaking on a better monitor. Simple as that.

Everyone will have their own preferences. Some people might prefer to only use flags, whereas I prefer flags for first pass and stars for second pass. I rarely bother to add Titles or Captions, except for the 4-5 star photos, and I don't add a lot of keywords. My album organization is fairly limited, but I do keep a few workflow albums starting with (e.g. @To Edit, @To Photoshop, @To HDR Merge etc.) for when I'm working on my phone/tablet, to remind me of things I want to do back at a desktop.

Most people coming to LR Cloudy are not coming from a Classic background, and don't want that level of having to "manage photos", but for those who do, I would suggest keeping it simple, and probably basing it around albums and folders. That would be easier to do if we some day get saved searches.
 
. Now, whether there is any sense in the likes of Lr giving the user the option to turn off the catalogue and related functionality is probably a question not worth asking as it will never happen.
Lightroom uses its catalog to store keywords, collections, and all DEVELOP settings. Also books, etc.

I doubt that any non-destructive photo editor can work without some sort of catalog.
 
@Victoria Bampton

You give a very good description of the tools, and what steps should be there on pages 5-10. However, I do not see a well defined sample workflow.
Or I might just be obtuse :D
 
Lightroom uses its catalog to store keywords, collections, and all DEVELOP settings. Also books, etc.

I doubt that any non-destructive photo editor can work without some sort of catalog.
DarkRoom can run sort of run without a catalog or database.
If you desire to set it up this way, DarkRoom can store all information in XML side car files, and on startup generate the database (which by default is an in memory database only). This method is great for portability, but you take a massive performance hit since nothing is cached from session to session. (I used DarkRoom for a bit looking to replace Lr, ran into some missing features which is why I never made the jump).
 
Lightroom uses its catalog to store keywords, collections, and all DEVELOP settings. Also books, etc.

I doubt that any non-destructive photo editor can work without some sort of catalog.
ON1 gives users the option to catalogue or not, and DxO PhotoLab does similar. Certain functionality is lost as a result of course but for those who just want a file browser rather that a DAM the option is there. That said I reckon there must still be some sort of database management at play.

Still, if there are users who do not like the idea of a DAM in Lr why not just use Bridge, or similar, and Ps. Camera Raw functionality is still available.
 
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Stepping back a bit, why is the concern about use of a catalog?

The "Adobe lockin" comes from using the DEVELOP module, not the catalog itself.
 
Stepping back a bit, why is the concern about use of a catalog?

The "Adobe lockin" comes from using the DEVELOP module, not the catalog itself.
It is just something mentioned earlier in this thread - some people not being happy with Lr pushing them into a catalogue. Never understood the problem myself but there are many who are hung up on it. Have heard that particular moan on many occasions.
 
It is just something mentioned earlier in this thread - some people not being happy with Lr pushing them into a catalogue. Never understood the problem myself but there are many who are hung up on it. Have heard that particular moan on many occasions.
I know, but I just don't understand the hangup. What if that Lightroom file were called the "database?" Email always uses a database. So do personal finance programs. And FireFox. https://www.sqlite.org/famous.html
 
I think some people simply don't want to keep LRC's kind of track of their images. They just want to choose an image and go straight to editing it without the hassle of importing it into a catalogue.

I couldn't work that way. I need the DAM aspects of the application.
 
I think some people simply don't want to keep LRC's kind of track of their images. They just want to choose an image and go straight to editing it without the hassle of importing it into a catalogue.
Exactly. It is also a easy excuse to avoid Adobe and Lightroom.
I couldn't work that way. I need the DAM aspects of the application.
As do I. I am constantly moving back and forth between the Develop and Library modules.
 
I think some people simply don't want to keep LRC's kind of track of their images. They just want to choose an image and go straight to editing it without the hassle of importing it into a catalogue.

I couldn't work that way. I need the DAM aspects of the application.
Hal,

We are in very strong agreement. An import-free alternative to Lightroom is Adobe Camera RAW, but not for me.

Phil Burton
 
I need the DAM too, without doubt. Interestingly a while ago I was reading sometghing about Exposure X and the fact that it does not have a catalogue thus one does not have to import. Well yes, but no really as it indexes the images in the background.
 
I need the DAM too, without doubt. Interestingly a while ago I was reading sometghing about Exposure X and the fact that it does not have a catalogue thus one does not have to import. Well yes, but no really as it indexes the images in the background.
So when is a database not a database? or a catalog?
 
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