I've been playing around with the 30-day trial of Lightroom and am very impressed by some things but concerned about others. I know people have rewritten volumes on the subject but I'm having difficulty understanding a handful of things. I'll be very appreciate of any advice.
First of all, let me briefly state that I'm an amateur -- an enthusiast -- with an ever growing collection of pictures. I've typically been going through my (Canon) RAW files, delete the ones I don't want, make high quality jpgs that go on an external harddrive, and smaller low quality copies that go on my laptop. (Unfortuantely, disk space is a concern on the laptop, so I can't keep 12,000 full sized pictures around, much less RAW files too). I then burn a couple of copies of backups of the RAW files so that I'll have them if I need them. I use Canon's DPP for all my RAW work.
Okay, so I had really hoped that Lighroom would be a great DAM (digital asset management) solution. The more I've played with it, the more I have concerns that it's not meant to be a DAM solution. For example, ideally I'd love to have Lightroom know that my different versions of my files (RAW, big jpg, and small jpg) are all the same picture. But Lightroom won't work this way since they're all on different drives. Instead I've been thinking I might want to use something like iView MediaPro as a DAM solution and that Lightroom would best be used solely as a RAW processing tool.
But even here I have some concerns that confuse me...
Foremost, where does Lightroom store the adjustments its making to RAW files? If I edit RAW files locally on my laptop and then burn those files to DVDs, will lightroom have these edits if I bring the files back up in Lightroom later? I'm thinking I'll have to delete the RAW files from Lightroom library if I get too many of them. With Canon's DPP, your changes were always saved with the RAW file, which was nice since you could put on a DVD and take it off later and still have your changes.
I'm sorry for such a rambling question, I just want to know how you're using lightroom. Could I change my workflow and use Lightroom as a DAM? How do you use Lightroom if you're not permanently keeping your RAW files on a connected drive?
Thanks.
