What metaphor will explain Lightroom to a non-computer person?

>> I’ve been scolded by at least a dozen different IT people who said keeping all of your files on the desktop was the worst possible thing for your computer and would bring it to a halt eventually.

The main technical problem that I see there, especially for a professional or advanced photographer who probably has a large volume of stored Raw files and/or layered Tif/Psd files, is that he may soon be overloading the System (C:) drive which needs about 25% free space to function well. Tell him to buy a couple externals and to put short cuts to them on the Desktop.

but he's also one of those people who keeps all his files in folders on his desktop.

Nothing wrong with that if it works for him. Plenty of photographers use solutions other than Lightroom.

As the others have said, metaphors often confuse more than illuminate. They help when you have a strong example with lots of parallels. I can't think of any close parallels for Lightroom unless you have experience with other database driven apps in a creative environment.. You just learn it. Then embrace it or find something else. The "For Dummies" books often resort to metaphors to explain concepts but I've never found them helpful to me.

Perhaps he'll be better off with Bridge+Photoshop or a DAM (with no Catalog)+Editor such as OnOne Photo Raw which I am enjoying using.

I hate metaphors in this situation, I despise them, because I don't think Lightroom is like anything else, so metaphors don't apply.

I have seen people liken Lightroom to cooking; I failed to see the analogy. I have seen people liken Lightroom to iTunes, but since I never used iTunes, the analogy was meaningless to me.

The other problem with metaphors is that it is an incomplete explanation, and the listener will apply his own understanding on top of the metaphor to cover areas where the metaphor is silent, and come to a conclusion that is not correct.

So, my opinion is that metaphors won't work, and you need to actually explain Lightroom without a metaphor. And also remember that Lightroom is not for everyone, and some people will never develop the understanding to use Lightroom effectively and without frustration.

Lightroom is a database. It does not contain your photos, but it knows about their location and other important facts about your photos. It remembers the location and other important facts about your thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?) photos, so you the human user of Lightroom, don't have to remember ... And because human memory cannot remember the details (location, other important facts) of thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?) of photos.

The most logical use is that humans remember photos by content (photos of kids at the beach; photo of Aunt Mary at Christmas; photo of Mount Rushmore), and so if you use Lightroom by providing that content to your photos via keywords and other metadata, then that's all you need, that's all you have to search for, is the content. You don't have to remember the folder or the file name, you just have to remember you want the picture of Aunt Mary at Christmas, and then search for photos with that information in keywords or in other metadata.

RFSLeander  wrote So, how do you explain the Lightroom file management system to your more artistic friends?

I don't.   There are plenty of videos on the Adobe site and Youtube that explain the Lightroom file management system.  Sometimes I send web links to a few good videos to people on the issue they are having and then it is up to them to take the time and effort to watch them and learn.  I will also take time to do a little training IF and only if they make the effort to learn on their own too.