Clean and easy photochemistry

In this paper we try to convince you that the usual prejudices against photochemistry are not always well founded, supported by examples from the literature and from our own work. In fact, photochemistry can be a very powerful tool, for example in some elegant total syntheses which use key photochemical steps. Furthermore, the exploitation of chromatic orthogonality which allows wavelength-selective reactions, and recent strategies opening the possibility of enantioselective catalysis in photochemical reactions, expand the scope of this versatile synthetic tool. Finally, state-of-art LED-technology has allowed the development of small and easy-to-use photoreactors.