by
jlwilm » Mon Jul 28, 2008 9:37 am
Just some History -
When I started off in 2004, I waited until January the next year to buy a digital camera. I bought a Canon G6 and shot a few pictures with it but didn't get back into photography for about a year later - March 2006 when I got a call from someone who was having problems with Elements 4. I tried to give some help, got bitten by the bug, got involved with the local camera club and started learning PSE4 to help my friend.
Then got really involved and found out that mt G6 didn't quite cut the mustard, so talked myself into buying a Canon 30D DSLR. Umnh.
When I started off, I was a Windows Explorer guy - managed my own file system and backup strategy, used the explorer thumbnails to tell me what picture to pick, etc.
Then started shooting in RAW. Bummer, didn't have a RAW thumbnnail viewer that would work, so reluctantly, had to start to work with Organizer. Hated it at first, then learned it and got to love it.
It never broke on me or did anything bad that so many people have reported issues with.
Later I bought CS3 and stayed away from Bridge for a while, preferring to use Organizer, then migrated to Bridge as more and more features and tutorials that I was looking at convinced me it was time to switch.
Then in March of this year got an offer to buy Lightroom which came bundled with OnOne suite for Photoshop, so bit the bullet again.
I had first tried the Lightroom Beta and hated it, but downloaded the trial version with its 30 day trial period and made up my mind to go ahead and make the purchase/
Lightroom is like Organizer on Steroids! I still use Bridge for some things, but use Lr for all my basic exposure mods, only going to CS3 when I need to do some masking or selective corrections - I believe some of these are going to be included in Lr 2 release shortly, but am comfortable with where I am now.
So, long story. I think the point of it is, I used the software or approach that made sense at the time, modified it or junked it when the situation demanded and was flexible enough to make the change when I had to. I still organize and control my file system and directory structure the same way irrespective of the manner I am managing my access to images. And, I still revert back to Windows Explorer at times when it is called for.