Chris,
I work somewhat differently than yourself but do adhere to a regular archiving process.
I gave up shooting for clients about a decade ago and shoot exclusively for the stock photography industry and to build
inventory for a budding print sales business.
As such, I generally edit and archive at the end of each month and usually add between 1K-2K new Raw images monthly
after all the real crap has been edited out.
I have been working this way for about a decade and started with Extensis Portfolio. It had suited my purposes until about a
year ago when it really started to fall behind the eight ball and stop supporting new cameras. The 5D Mkll, for example, is still
not supported and suggests to me that their days are done, at least for the retail client.
About three weeks ago, I decided to try the beta version of LR 3.0 to see how it handled larger catalogues of images.
So far, I've imported just under 75K images to a test catalogue and, to date, am very impressed with the performance and reliability of
LR 3.0 to act as I need-catalogue and access images by keyword when I need to go back into the files to process a submission,etc.
I have heard of a number of people with catalogues in excess of 200K images that don't report problems so I believe this will prove to be
a pretty decent solution.
As old habits die hard, I still plan to keep doing my rough edits and keywording in PhotoMechanic but, I have no doubts that LR will
perform these tasks without issue.
Best,
Mark
www.marktomalty.com