Lightroom 2

I once tried Lightroom, but I disliked it. I don't feel i have control over where files are saved and how to make a backup. I didn't dive in deep enough to find out because it was also slow.

On the other hand I recently tried Capture NX 2 and I am amazed by the possibilities. The control point technology allows you to add lighting in post process: Darken this part slightly make this a little brighter, add some contrast here, reduce saturation there, change the color here a bit and there a bit more. The automatic selection mask based on the colour you put the point on is very very nice and much better than creating selections with Photoshop's lasso tool. When one is using Nikon equipment I highly recommend to try it!

I do feel I have absolut control over where files are saved and I make backups on a weekly basis. I admit working with RAW-files could be faster but I the results achieved through the editing module compensate for the sometimes slow progress. I tested quit e bunch of similar programs and foundLightroom to be superior to the rest.

Do you make backups such that you leave the files on your HD or such that you delete them from the HD? I usually dump all my stuff on an external drive after a while which is where I get especially worried what happens with the software that expects the file to be still on the HD and into some special folder where a lot of settings are stored somewhere in some database which all gets out of sync and chaos is perfect as soon as I would move to a new computer. You don't have that feeling with lightroom 2 don't you?
I had this feeling a lot with Picasa2 that I also used for quite some time.

You can do that, I think, with Lightroom, because the most important file is the catalogue file which needs to be stored locally. It should be no problem to move the actual picture files to an external drive. Oh yes, I actually have tried that already but than decided to outsource ozher data and keep the pictures on my laptop. And when I do backups I do of course leave the original file untouched - would it else still be a backup?