I don't get the Adobe Lightroom methodology

I like photographing, although I don't think I am not even on the par with amateur photographers, but it is a better way to waste time than laying on the couch watching The Simpsons or something (don't get me wrong, I love the Simpsons). I have a Nikon D40 to play with and I take a lot of picture of one subject just to experiment with different settings and compositions. I guess this is the way SLRs are supposed to be handled. Hence I looked into Adobe Lightroom as a way to import, organize, pick good shots and publish photos. Yes, I like Lightroom over Windows Live Photo Gallery - in the matter of fact, it's not even close!

But there are some things I don't get about Adobe Lightroom. First is the methodology that you never ever overwrite the original photos. I personally don't get this design decision. Lightroom offers me a great set of tools to manipulate and insert metadata in the pictures. But it is like I should only be allowed to use these great tools if I only use Adobe Lightroom. I have no easy way to immediately save my cropped picture over the original one. I probably have no reason why I would not like to overwrite the original picture. At least give me an easy way to save the modified picture into the same folder as the original one with a, for example, different name (picture1_mod.jpg). That is why I agree with the complaint made by for example KDern at Flickr forums.

The other thing I really don't get is why I am not able to out-of-the-box export my photos to Flickr. It is an other example of how Adobe wants me to only play with them in their sandbox. Come on, Adobe! Even its competitor, Aperture, has this feature built in. Yes yes, I know there are some extension that allow me to do this, but Flickr export integrated would probably give me better support.

Nevertheless, I will give Adobe Lightroom the 30 day trial period Adobe offers me. I like the overall feel of the user interface and of course, as you would expect from Adobe, Lightroom gives me more than enough tools to manipulate the photos.