Originally posted by Alfisti I just set up a file tree like this ....
2009_04
2009_05
Etc etc etc
Then I have another set of folders marked ...
Prints
Web
and withion thos I have the images sorted by year.
Piece of cake frankly.
Yeah, but do you do stock photography? Do you ever have a "now where is that one photo that I took of that particular subject that I don't have labeled because it was among 200 pictures of a different subject I took that day" moment? That's what LR-type cataloging is good for. It's not the best, but it's better than just organization by folder. With a real cataloging system it's easy to find things by keyword, and you can cross-reference different subjects too. Not everybody needs this, but the functionality is there.
Just for clarification, I'm with you in terms of organization. Most of my organization is done by folder (e.g. 2009-05-18_kids_playing), but LR has abilities that go far beyond that if one cares to put in the effort. I'm not crazy about the need to import photos before working on them, but I've come to live with it. Set it to import, go watch some TV or browse the web, and in a few minutes it's ready to go.
Organization isn't why I use Lightroom. I use it because it's easy to make quick edits, and simple to work on large batches of photos at once. There are some really nice features like creating "virtual copies" where you copy files to version out (1 color, 1 b&w, 1 a different crop, etc.) without taking up disk space for all those copies. Also snapshots within a given process, so you can go back 10 steps and see what your photo looked like back then compared to now (before and after comparisons). Pretty sure these are things Photoshop doesn't do for you.