26 minutes ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Only it does. The import module of Lightroom is very flexible and powerful. It also does exactly what you say it does not.

I import every days photos into distinct folders with my the Folder name of the Event, files renamed to that event + date info, and placed in sub-folders named by date.

Photos

+++ 2026

+++ Gods Pocket Sept 2026

+++ Sept 6 2026

+++ Gp-Sept26_Photo1

I have 20 years of photo organized this way using lightroom and it is very simple to parse and discover using just the file system. LR goes beyond that with a system of tags and metadata in the library but i don't really use that.

Snap

1 hour ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Only it does. The import module of Lightroom is very flexible and powerful. It also does exactly what you say it does not.

I import every days photos into distinct folders with my the Folder name of the Event, files renamed to that event + date info, and placed in sub-folders named by date.

Photos

+++ 2026

+++ Gods Pocket Sept 2026

+++ Sept 6 2026

+++ Gp-Sept26_Photo1

I have 20 years of photo organized this way using lightroom and it is very simple to parse and discover using just the file system. LR goes beyond that with a system of tags and metadata in the library but i don't really use that.

No it does not!

I organize my photos very similar as you do, but I want to organize my photos completely outside of LRc (without the many extra troubles involved). I just do not need this module and there is no option to work without it...

1 minute ago, Architeuthis said:

No it does not!

I organize my photos very similar as you do, but I want to organize my photos completely outside of LRc (without the many extra troubles involved). I just do not need this module and there is no option to work without it...

Of course you can do this.

Put your files wherever you want. Sync that folder structure into lightroom Turn on XMP files in Lightroom settings. Go edit your photos with Lightroom. Your edits are annotated into the sidecar XMP files on disk adjacent to your RAWs. The RAW files plus edits can be viewed in Bridge or Photoshop, or reimported into Lightroom years later.

The XMP capability (plus exporting to JPG, etc) completely take Lightroom's library system out of the picture. You don't have to rely on it if that doesn't work for you.

37 minutes ago, Dave_Hicks said:

Of course you can do this.

Put your files wherever you want. Sync that folder structure into lightroom Turn on XMP files in Lightroom settings. Go edit your photos with Lightroom. Your edits are annotated into the sidecar XMP files on disk adjacent to your RAWs. The RAW files plus edits can be viewed in Bridge or Photoshop, or reimported into Lightroom years later.

The XMP capability (plus exporting to JPG, etc) completely take Lightroom's library system out of the picture. You don't have to rely on it if that doesn't work for you.

This, more or less, how I do it (I let LRc create the daily subfolders in a folder that I have precreated and take only the photos that I select as possible keepers; XMP files are stored along with the RAW files in the same directory).

I find the LRc system, however, confusing: when I start and need to select a subfolder of a specific day, I see the volumes (one SSD at the PC and another NAS), but no subdirectories, as my LRc is configured at present. Under each volume, I just see the subdirectories representing individual days (I rather would prefer to have the entire path, e.g. ws_data/phts/2026/2026_06_Beli/2026-06-14 as specific example, and this long path just for higher subdirectories, where I have selected to see). That makes the selection and keeping the overview difficult. Furthermore, some daily subdirectories got lost in time in LRc, fortunately not on the volume (certainly my fault by pushing accidentially a wrong button). Upon reimport, LRc does not let me, since the photos are considered duplicates...

After processing the photos of an individual trip get transferred to the NAS. I have to tell LRc individually for every daily subdirectory, that the location of the files has changed. Just a lot of unnecessary operations wasting my time...

=> These are just two complaints out of many. For me, the Library module is pretty unintuitive...

37 minutes ago, Architeuthis said:

This, more or less, how I do it (I let LRc create the daily subfolders in a folder that I have precreated and take only the photos that I select as possible keepers; XMP files are stored along with the RAW files in the same directory).

I find the LRc system, however, confusing: when I start and need to select a subfolder of a specific day, I see the volumes (one SSD at the PC and another NAS), but no subdirectories, as my LRc is configured at present. Under each volume, I just see the subdirectories representing individual days (I rather would prefer to have the entire path, e.g. ws_data/phts/2026/2026_06_Beli/2026-06-14 as specific example, and this long path just for higher subdirectories, where I have selected to see). That makes the selection and keeping the overview difficult. Furthermore, some daily subdirectories got lost in time in LRc, fortunately not on the volume (certainly my fault by pushing accidentially a wrong button). Upon reimport, LRc does not let me, since the photos are considered duplicates...

After processing the photos of an individual trip get transferred to the NAS. I have to tell LRc individually for every daily subdirectory, that the location of the files has changed. Just a lot of unnecessary operations wasting my time...

=> These are just two complaints out of many. For me, the Library module is pretty unintuitive...

Sure, no one ever accused Lightroom of being intuitive. But if you learn how to use and configure the Import module you can make it do almost anything you need or want.

7 hours ago, Architeuthis said:

I use LRc and PS with Macbook Pro M1...

Great software and no need for an alternative, but what makes me outrageous is the "Library" system: Instead of having the option to define the folders/subfolders from where to take the photos and where to place the Adobe specific files by oneself and just use the "Develop" module, one has to use the entire Adobe Libraray-system that I find complicated and confusing...

I wrote them several times, but still they do not offer this simple and easy to implement option...

Yes, I have a similar complaint. I organize all my video files by trip, but Pinnacle wants to use a library system as well.

Throwing my nickel into the conversation, my base workflow is typically the following:
1) Import the day's dive into Windows file system and name the folder <Site> - <year> -<month> - <day>.

2) Open Lightroom Classic and run the import on that previous file, it creates the same named folder under Library Navigator
3) Run a first triage using X and then Photo -> Delete Rejected Photos -> Remove from Disk
4) Run desired edits and a second pass to delete pics.
5) Tag photos with location and critter tags
6) Output JPGs for web, PNG for prints
I rarely use PS for editing base photos unless I'm doing something more artistic. And since LrC had initially begun as an indexing system, that capability is really useful. For what I put into CCR and underwater photography, the Photography subscription from Adobe for PS and LR isn't much more than a couple O2 fills.

Thanks for sharing detailed your workflow

@RVBldr

For sure there will be never the one and only way to do something but I like the different approach people use and I try to break it down to the must needed features for my app.

I wrote them several times, but still they do not offer this simple and easy to implement option...

@SwiftFF5 I work 30years as a software developer and believe me just because a few people write to them means nothing. When you change something today tomorrow the next user will cry.

The only thing you can try is, make most of the users happy or what I personally like is to give users the possibility to customise the ui as much as possible. This is much more work but the best way in my opinion.

6 hours ago, TimG said:

Haha, funny old world. Me, I find the Library brilliant! I can search all 60k photos and find exactly what I'm looking for (yeah, you have to Keyword of course). The ability to then drop files into a Collection is terrific.

Each to his own, eh?!

Id agree. The main reason im still tied to paying Adobe every month is the catalogue handling. There are better raw converters, decent enough processing alternatives but none of them have the catalogue handling to allow me to find and organise images rapidly.

Ive got about 280,000 images spread across a laptop, 2 x NAS and 8 or so external hard drives. I often get asked for specific topics or images from the past and i need to be able to find it easily. LR Library allows that. Absolutely nothing else on the market does.

4 hours ago, Jurgen said:

For sure there will be never the one and only way to do something but I like the different approach people use and I try to break it down to the must needed features for my app.

I guess I missed the biggest headache; here in Puget Sound, particles are just a cost of doing business, even with good strobe positioning, backscatter is a thing at times. Having a much better tool to remove backscatter would be awesome. I know there's another commercial product based on a starfield removal tool, but I'm surprised Adobe hasn't improved the dust/scratch algorithms much more.

I use my Macbook Pro M1 - it does all the basic stuff I need it to do, white balance, color curves, colors, sharpen images, clean-up - and best of all, its FREE

I would love to try lightroom or something, but their prices for which I would only use a few times a year and I don't need their storage is expensive

On 10/9/2026 at 9:30 AM, Dave_Hicks said:

The free Adobe Bridge app can read and convert all of your edited RAW files.

Dave, you may have just saved me many hours of tedious work - thanks a lot!

On 10/9/2026 at 2:06 PM, Dave_Hicks said:

Only it does. The import module of Lightroom is very flexible and powerful. It also does exactly what you say it does not.

I import every days photos into distinct folders with my the Folder name of the Event, files renamed to that event + date info, and placed in sub-folders named by date.

Photos

+++ 2026

+++ Gods Pocket Sept 2026

+++ Sept 6 2026

+++ Gp-Sept26_Photo1

I have 20 years of photo organized this way using lightroom and it is very simple to parse and discover using just the file system. LR goes beyond that with a system of tags and metadata in the library but i don't really use that.

Exactly how i use it too.

All my unedited/backlog lives in a Photo Temp/2026/yyyymmdd structure on the laptop. Once done that is moved to the NAS, path updated.

Finished path likely P:/2026/20261011 - Rugby or whatever. Perfectly navigable both outside and inside LR.

If i need to do FS stuff outside LR its just a case of going to the relevant directory. I also have LR import add filenames of where/data as well.

My LR goes back to 2010 so not quite 20 years but works in the same way for the north of quarter of a million assets.

I DO use the LR metadata and tags those as i often get asked for a particular place/subject and so on and its faster (unless they give me an exact date).

Edited Sunday at 09:50 PM2 days by Rich W

I use Lightroom. I quite like the cloud-based storage. The subscription, not so much. It's probably a reasonable deal for what you get, but I, for one, love saving pfennigs where I can.

There's enough editing ability, too, and I try my best to attain images in-camera. I do have Photoshop for those rare occasions when I use RC Astro Backscatter Eliminator.

I create a new date and tag for each folder, try my best to keyword images, edit in LR and export for whatever I need, usually pretty small JPEG files for social media.

Thanks @Dave_Hicks for your work flow ideas. You've given it a lot of thought.

Thanks to everybody so far for sharing their workflows.

Many years ago, I started out on a Windows system using ACR, Bridge and Photoshop.

Because at a certain point I started selling images to stock photo agencies, and because keywording in Lightroom was significantly more comprehensive, better implemented, and practically an 'industry standard' at the time, I reluctantly switched from ACR/Bridge to LR. However, Lightroom's database/catalog system, inflexible GUI, and the inability to crop pixel-perfectly when zoomed in on an image are incredibly frustrating.

My keyword hierarchy is very extensive and organized by species.

In Photoshop, I sometimes use the Photo AI plugin from Topaz, Backscatter Exterminator (which I don't find particularly good), and very occasionally something the old Nik Collection.

I have actions for resizing and automatically sharpening images for different web sizes, which I then selectively edit for sharpening.

Generally, I try to work non-destructively for as long as possible, so I also open my RAW files from Lightroom in Photoshop as Smart Objects. This allows me to edit the RAW files again later in Photoshop if necessary, without having to start from scratch.

In my underwater photography workflow, the following are important:

(Semi-)automatic masking, backscatter removal and selective processing in general.

The first two things don't work quite satisfactorily in Photoshop yet and good masking depends heavily on one's skill in using the right PS tools - I still have room for improvement there.🫡

The automatic subject/background recognition in Photoshop is okay, but for me, as a perfectionist, it's still not quite satisfactory and I usually have to do it manually.

I like the logical structure of the individual tools in Lightroom/ACR and would prefer not to switch to a completely differently structured RAW converter.

However, because of my complete dependence on Adobe, I also have a somewhat uneasy feeling about the future - I wouldn't put anything past these monopolists.

Thanks for sharing your workflow @waso

I used Nik Collection before also I I really liked them.

Well and what the future brings nobody really know the monopolists problem is there but I think I the future there will be more and more options maybe to choose from.