The current situation and possible future development of macromolecular crystallography are reviewed. The rapid progress and maturation of this field in recent years have to a large extent been made possible by the inspiration and generous support of several active structural genomics initiatives. Two tendencies can be currently observed: one which treats protein crystallography as a highly automatic tool for investigating various biological problems without the need to engage in the intricacies of the technique and a second approach where this method is applied to crystals of difficult, large and complex biological systems, requiring a deeper knowledge of various aspects of crystallography. In the near future it is expected that these two trends will coexist, developing in a parallel fashion.