You can say I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid using Lightroom and Photoshop in my work. Possible reasons:1. Learning to use software in a royal pain 2. I am hooked on DPP for 95% of the work I need to do 3. I’ve been producing primarily for the Web, when I make prints I’m definitely in PS 4. I’ve never had to keyword or title my stuff
As I get more serious into management of my “assets” (funny, I never considered my snaps as assets before because I never felt they were of much use to anyone) I know I need to get into some professional tools. Honestly if they added the following two features to DPP, I would be a happy camper and would continue to use it for most of my workflow: 1. Add/modify EXIF data and keywords 2. Free Transform the image (for straightening and perspective correction)
DPP is FAST and it writes all non-destructive changes within the CR2 file itself, no sidecars, no major databases to sync and haul around. My other choice is to convert everything to DNG and have the same idea, but this means I am into Bridge or Lightroom and still leaves the chore of archiving the original CR2s (which I probably should be doing anyway).
From what I can see if I am going to get into stock I need to keyword, and the best way to do and manage that seems to be Lightroom. I’m sure I will get over my cold feet with this program, but honestly I have tried to get going with this on three separate occasions and each time I gave up because it just seemed too hard. The concept of the “database” holding everything is different. I should know better as this is the basic architecture of any version control or content management system used in my work. I think in Adobe’s attempt to hide this complexity from the end users, it leaves most of what is going on with the file a complete mystery, which disturbs me. Yes it’s time for an old dog (Doug) to learn some new tricks. Adobe spent millions of $$s on this program and spoke to hundreds of pros, so it’s not like the program was developed by some guy in a closet. Who is to say I cannot adopt to a new workflow designed to make me more productive? You cannot resist the Force!
So I am going to start Importing my Tuscany images into Lightroom, and expect that ALL of my edits, cloning, crops, and color corrections with DPP will be lost. I’m crying now…I’ll keep you updated on the progress.