Lightroom’s SDK forum, never the busiest or most informative place on the net, has become a bit of a no-go zone lately as one particularly pungent forum member (let’s call him Borat) seems to feel the need to advertise his opinion on every topic. A period of  silence followed by modesty would probably make everyone, me included, appreciate Borat’s contributions for whatever they may be worth….

Despite this vuvuzela noise drowning any signals from the forum, I’d noticed a John Ellis posting there. I was curious because he seemed to know his way round Lua but I hadn’t heard of anything that he’d released – until yesterday when he announced his Any File plug-in:

Any File lets you import any type of file into a Lightroom 3 catalog and manage it just like a photo — PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, audio, etc. Typical uses include managing releases, invoices, notes, scans of old documents, audio tracks for slide shows, and avoiding all of the LR 3 limitations on video formats and video metadata.

I’d been wondering if anyone would do something like this. Frankly, it shouldn’t be necessary – Lightroom itself should allow the photographer to decide what type of files to catalogue, shouldn’t it?