Lightroom Sucks.....

I love lightroom! Really I do, except I have 2 big issues that after a year of use is killing me.

1. I'm not a pro photographer and LR workflow is set up (or at least it seems to be)--- import - edit - export (to PS) - print and/or burn. done. I don't have a need to work like this, I edit in LR and then export 9 times out of 10 right to the web (zenfolio). Then if I have to print I order from there because it's just easier and quicker. But then I find myself in a situation with a ton of edited, but not totally saved images. If i browse through my collection with an image viewer (faststone, acdc, etc..) I can't see the LR edits, just raw how if came out of the camera. wish it would be easier to embed the edits. exporting and then re-saving is time consuming.

Now you might say just browse through LR, after all a big part of LR is management....well this brings me to my #2 problem.

2. LR is the most unstable program I have used in my life, period. a little background, I'm a 3d artist, I do animation and use very big software packages like 3ds max, after effects, maya, combustion, etc....none of them that do 1000x more then light room have ever crashed as much.
Sometimes the crash is so bad I have to reboot, most of the time, after it crashes, it freezes firefox (why I have no idea), and it freezes windows explorer which is basically like kicking windows in the groin because it's pretty much useless without explorer (no task bar).

I'm running LR 1.4
I'm a custom built PC
3gb ram AMD Phenom X4
nvidia gforce 7950 1gb ram

anyone else have problems? I'm seriously looking for another alternative to LR, but like I said I do love it, but I can't take the bugs anymore.

I would suggest that your PC is the issue, not LR.

I second Tim's suggestion. Both 1.x and 2.x releases have been stable on my machines. (AMD and Intel processors).
What other applications do you have open?

dgoakill wrote in post #6878613
and it freezes windows explorer which is basically like kicking windows in the groin because it's pretty much useless without explorer (no task bar).

I've found it unusably slow on 4 pcs in my home, I'm an application developer, so I have a few good ones.

I quit using LR because it is so slooooowwww, then will crash.

If, however, LR crashes explorer. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc or launch your task manager however you want. End task on Explorer.exe. Then from the task manager window go to File | New Task and type in explorer.exe. This way you don't have to reboot. (Solves most 'compter crash' problems)

1) Highlight all the images and press CTRL + S, it will save the settings onto your original files. The whole point of lightroom is being non destructive.

2) It's stable for me. The only time I've had it crash was because I uploaded some corrupted images into the library. Basically when I try generating a preview it crashed. If it crashes frequently on that image or set of images, export out all those images and re-import them.

As for "1", I can't really comment as LR is fine for my workflow. I simply do the edits to the images I want to work on then export all those as TIFFs into a seperate folder. This then gives me a folder of images with all the LR adjustments done. I am happy for my RAW images to stay as they are, with the adjustments sitting in the .xmp sidecar file, rather than being applied directly to the RAW, as that would defeat the point of RAWs to my mind.

I think "2" is probably an issue with your computer, possibly LR didn't install correctly and you might find it works better if you do a reinstall ?

I have had LR installed on both my desktop and my laptop since just after it was released, it is used quite extensively on an almost daily basis. So far, I have never had a single crash, glitch or lockup with it. It has always performed flawlessly.

Zazoh wrote in post #6878795
I've found it unusably slow on 4 pcs in my home, I'm an application developer, so I have a few good ones.

I quit using LR because it is so slooooowwww, then will crash.

If, however, LR crashes explorer. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc or launch your task manager however you want. End task on Explorer.exe. Then from the task manager window go to File | New Task and type in explorer.exe. This way you don't have to reboot. (Solves most 'compter crash' problems)

I do that, but it only works 50% of the time. I have to manually kill explorer, but it won't run if I try to manually restart it. I have to kill off firefox as well and that seems to allow explorer to free-up. I've suspected a conflict on my machine as everyone here has mentioned, but i can't figure out what it would be. this has been going on for quite a few months.

I also have massive problems with Lightroom crashing and this is the 2nd install of the program after a recent full format of my computer.

I'm usually working with about 900 photo's from an Autocross and I'll get through about 100-200 at a time before it comes to a crawl and then just crashes or has to be killed in the task manager.

I'm running XP Pro on a Quad core, 4GB Ram, and Nvidia 8800GT, so it should handle it noooo problem.

I usually have around 2,500 photos up at once and the only time it crashes is when I get a little crazy with the multi-tasking (itunes, Dreamweaver, Elements, Firefox, etc).

I have over 80k images in the catalog running from a lowly Dell D630 with no probs for over a year now... You might wanna use smart collections more often to save you time in the future.

tim wrote in post #6878745
I would suggest that your PC is the issue, not LR.

I'm with you, It has *never* crashed on me no matter what I have done to it...

It's stable for me but it's UNBEARABLY slow.
Hell, I can't even use brushes in real time, there's a lag of 3-4 seconds while the exact same operation (non destructive) in Photoshop in blazing fast.
This makes me want to switch to a Mac so I could use Aperture..

I believe that you have RAM issues.

Never crashed on me ever, and even runs happily on my six-year old 512Mb PowerBook.

I think I have to agree with most everyone, it's probably a problem with the system. I ran ligthroom 1.1 on a PC that had troubles running solitaire some days. Last PC I had 2.0 on had troubles (really slugish) and after a re-install it ran fine.

As for the problem with viewing them, Why don't you export all of the ones you want to view? And why do you need to export and then re-saving? Just export under the name you want it to be.