If Adobe were to simply sell Bridge and ACR

And Lightroom is but one of them. Maybe you need to explore the alternatives instead of complaining about just one.
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I'm so bright, my father calls me son.

Now that you've judged the quality of my typing, take a look at my photos. . .
http://www.jpgmag.com/people/glenbarrington/photos

CBuff said:

Yes, in my opinion and my workflow, LR takes over, which I HATE!

Click to expand...

Well, I don't think LR takes over. The one difference is that when you are in Lightroom (and only when you are in Lightroom) you need to use the Lightroom browser, rather than any other browser, in order to select the image you want to work on. You can't use Windows Explorer, say, and double-click to open a file in LR's develop module. Personally I can't see why anyone would want to do that, when LR's image browser is orders of magnitude better (for images) than Explorer.

CBuff said:

I prefer the "file browser" lightweight approach of Bridge.

Click to expand...

But LR's library module IS a file browser! The significant difference is that you can browse only files that you've chosen to import into LR's database. There are strong operational and performance reasons for that which bring (to me) only advantages.

CBuff said:

If only LR can be made to act like Bridge, instead of trying to manage my life...

Click to expand...

In what way does it try to mange your life?
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Simon

+1 agree! Those programs that search and create huge databases, or create new databases with each transfer, are a pain. There is always a danger of program incompatibility or the company going out of business or no longer supporting the program. Drag and drop is our friend!

I went dit in 2000, and can find any of my hundreds of thousands of images in about 60 seconds by using simple folder labeling and dates and using the Windows search function.

Just can't get my head around them.

But Lightroom is totally painless to use.

The only thing you need to remember is to import the images and once that is done, Lightroom is a joy to use and having the database provides you with the best history functionality ever.

I use windows folders as my organiser and just create a new LR database for each job
(I know. My choice - don't nag).

That way I get the benefit of LR but I just use Windows to sort my folders wherever I want them.

I'll have a look at Corel's Aftershot Pro (formerly Bibble Pro). Thanks for the replies so far.

http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4670071

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Never buy version 1.0 of anything.