I wonder why Adobe has not already provided a freely distributed program to provide all the navigational, querying, and viewing functionality of LR, without all the editing features, for viewing images similar to Acrobat Reader for viewing .pdf documents? 1) While one can do similar queries on most of the LR created metadata in Windows Explorer, and view most of the metadata as one can in LR, it is not as convenient as querying and viewing in LR. 2) Windows explorer CANNOT, in any way, view People Tags created in LR, to see which name belongs to which person in the photo. Without allowing others to view the people tags in a distributed collection, a very important feature, especially for historical photos, tagging people in the photo in LR becomes useless, and a waste of time and effort, when the work is intended to be distributed. 3) It would seem producing such a freely distributed viewer, perhaps called LR Viewer, would be a very simple task for Adobe to do. They would only need to strip out all the editing functionality of LR, preserving all the navigational, querying and viewing functionality already in LR. 4) The current People Tagging interface in LR, is very awkward when attempting to tag individuals in a group photo. It also makes viewing images with People Tags awkward and ugly, without forcing one to repeatedly turn the People Tagging mode on and off. In LR, all the tags are always displayed when the People mode is turned, to the point that the tags cover over adjacent faces in the photo, making it difficult to create tags and difficult to view them. 4a) Windows Photo Gallery, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, on the other hand, has a much better user interface for both tagging and viewing images, which have been people tagged. 4b) Windows Photo Gallery only shows a tag, created in WPG when one hovers the mouse over the face of the person tagged. 4c) When the cursor is moved, that tag disappears. 4d) So, when tagging people in large groups, it is no more difficult than tagging a solo person in a photo. 4e) In Windows Photo Gallery, one can see the full, uncluttered image without changing modes, and can conveniently browse the cursor from face to face to see who that person is. 4f) As a result, I am not using the People tagging feature in LR. Instead, after I export the photos for distribution, I will go back through all the hundreds, even thousands of photos to add the people tags using Windows Photo Gallery, and distribute the collections with the free, legacy Windows Photo Gallery install, so others can see the People tags created in WPG, and all the metadata created in LR. Adobe, please consider modifying the People tagging in LR to emulate the Windows Photo gallery interface. Adobe, please consider creating a freely distributed LR Viewer for conveniently viewing images and ALL the metadata created in LR.
... View more