The last thing I need is to have a problem with an Adobe subscription service (for any reason) and lose access to my files' metadata and my libraries and catalogs. That is what a DAM application does for those who responded to the post without a clue. Lightroom is a file manager in this regard with extremely limited functionality. There is no good way to link a RAW file on a NAS with multiple TIFF iterations of a file in another directory or on other users computers. You're right that no one program seems to do everything we want, but if it did then it may just get too messy to deal with the routine stuff easily.Ī problem with Lightroom and the rest of the image browsers and editors is that there are designed for one user with one computer. I think the latest Lr update lets us rearrange the edit commands on the right-hand interface panel, but I have yet to try that. If Lr was to disappear tomorrow, I would still have my files where they belong so that other software can find them without choking on files from the wrong brand of camera. This was especially handy when dealing with Nikon and Canon and other camera brands. In fact, so long as I added images when I imported them, Lr left them right where they were so that non-Lr software could still find them. At the time, Aperture could not emulate my folder / subfolder structure, but Lr could. The open source free stuff looks very interesting but still no one program that does everything I want. Now there are a couple of new ones that just hit the market. At the time C1and Lightroom were the only choices. I liked Aperture a lot and really wanted something that was a replacement. When Aperture was no longer being developed I tried Lightroom, Capture One Pro, ACDSee DXO, ON1 and a couple of the free ones. Just could not understand the interface and found it to be really poorly laid out in my opinion. Then when Aperture was announced as dead I tried it again. I tried Lightroom way back and settled on Aperture. I just can't seem to get comfortable with the interface.

Mylio metadata edit