Unless a recent Photoshop Lightroom version allows you to manage the photos outside of its library-database, it isn't. At least version 1 & 2 copied all files to an SQL database/hidden directory in the users folder.
Windows (Live) Photogallery is much better in this regard, as it indexes the files but keep the files were the are stored. Also all metadata changes are stored back to the file itself. The same goes for Windows Explorer and OSX Finder+Spotlight.
Windows (Live) Photogallery is much better in this regard, as it indexes the files but keep the files were the are stored. Also all metadata changes are stored back to the file itself. The same goes for Windows Explorer and OSX Finder+Spotlight.