Workflow - what do you do?

[bbtom10]

I have been reading Michael Freeman's 101 Photography Tips and he makes the point about understanding your own workflow. It made me realise that, as a beginner / amateur, I have probably changed my workflow every few months, and therefore I end up with files all over the place and bits here and bits there.

I know a similar post about file organisation was raised a few days / weeks ago, and the general consensus was Lightroom Rules, but what about the rest of the process - how do you load in your pictures, when do you do it, do you shoot RAW and load these in separately? How do you select out the best - do you have a shortlist then reduce that further or just go for the big hitters straight away? Where and when do you do your editing and what do you do with the finished articles?

My question is aimed more at the amateurs out there than the full-time or part-time pros but of course appreciate any feedback on this.

Thanks
Tom

[RecurrentNerve]

I constantly review my photos as I take them and immediately after. For example, this weekend I visited some relatives away from home, and took a few shots out and about. When I got back to the house I reviewed all the shots and so I had a sense of which ones were worth exporting when I got home. I locked these on the camera. By this time I already have an idea in my head as to what I want to do in post-processing for each image.

When I got back, I imported the photos I'd locked (the locked status shows up in my transfer program so it's a way of earmarking). I always shoot RAW so the next step is putting the shots through Adobe DNG Convertor. I then delete the original RAW files as DNG is lossless.

Next I open Bridge so I can see which shot I'm opening (Windows doesn't thumbnail RAW), then edit away. Any shots I'm really happy with get posted on here for critique and/or praise . The rest just get left in their import folders.

[BigFuzzy]

Ok, here's what I do.

• I use Adobe Bridge to import my RAW files (I only shoot RAW). But that's just because it's automated, no particular preference.
  
• They are imported into a HD that broken down into folder for year (currently 2010) then within that folder I have a folder for each shoot withe the folder name being something like "20100802_BigFuzzyShoot" This way all the folders are sortable by date when you "sort by name" I do not rename the files, though sometimes i think I should. But using this folder naming system, I can still find the shots easily.
  
• I then use LR3 to import the folder into without moving the files.
  
• I do 98% of my editing in LR but will export to PSCS4 if in need of some severe editing (or when building my montages). I use the LR3 color labels, keywords, ratings, and flags to select/sort/rate my images so I can more easily find them later. For example, for each image that has been fully processed gets a Green color label, and also tagged with "FP" so I can search for it later. FP =fully processed. Of course it's also tagged with other relevant words related to the shoot.
  
• From lightroom I export the finished file (Jpegs/TIFF/whatever) to a newly created "processed" folder that is in the main folder that has the RAWs. This way they're easier to find that searching through the same folder with the RAW images. The edited images are automatically imported into my LR3 library, but if not, I use the "Synch folder" option to ensure they're brought into LR so I can use the LR tools to upload to flickr, or email, or whatever. I DO rename the processed images, but still keep the YYYYMMDD_ tag at the beginning of the file name.
  
• At night, I have all the new files (included the processed ones) backed up to a 2nd HD and also uploaded to an online storage site, Mozy. I'm paranoid since losing many files to a HD crash in 2007 that lost me almost all of my 2006 images!

Hmm.. seems like a lot to do, but when you get used to it, it's 2nd nature. I've not changed my system in a while as it works for me.
Thing is, everyone has their own flow that they're comfy with, so you're likely to get as many different answers as there are replies.
I hope this helps?
Al

[bbtom10]

Originally Posted by BigFuzzy

Hmm.. seems like a lot to do, but when you get used to it, it's 2nd nature. I've not changed my system in a while as it works for me.
Thing is, everyone has their own flow that they're comfy with, so you're likely to get as many different answers as there are replies.
I hope this helps?

Al

That's great thanks, you're absolutely right that everyone has their own way of doing things, but I think I am just messing around and then I find something new or a new program (Picasa at the moment - still a LightRoom virgin) and give that a go - I am comfortable with trying to find out what works for me, but appreciate that there are loads of good tips and habits to be picked up by reading through other people's workflows.

Thanks for sharing.

Tom

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by RecurrentNerve

Next I open Bridge so I can see which shot I'm opening (Windows doesn't thumbnail RAW), then edit away.

Win7 does, and if you're using some previous version, you can download something (called Raw viewer or something similar) which will preview RAW images.

[RecurrentNerve]

Still on XP. Bridge does ok for me, I'll have a look at RAW viewer though. Bridge has the advantage of showing a decent sized preview as well though.

[Jim Poor]

Originally Posted by RecurrentNerve

. . . I then delete the original RAW files as DNG is lossless.

That's only true if you embed the raw file into the DNG.

I have two main workflows, one for events (tens of thousands of photos) and one for portraiture (a few photos).

Lightroom is great for what it is, but it is NOT a program for working with thousands and thousands of images with any speed.

So, for my sport event workflow, I start by copying the photos from my cards to a folder on my drive. This is much faster than importing / ingesting regardless of which program you use. I have a four slot reader as well as two other FW800 readers that can all be going at once.

After copying, I open the folder in Photo Mechanic for the initial cull and organization. I can can cull and organize 10K photos in less than an hour like this. Once that's done, I stay with Photo Mechanic for generation of onsite galleries as well as proofs that will be uploaded to my online website. The only exception to this is when I end up in REALLY bad lighting and need to do some bulk WB corrections. Then I'll switch to Lightroom, but the process is so painfully slow in LR, that I avoid it at all costs up to this point.

Once everything is loaded to the website, I import the folder structure into Lightroom in preparation for fulfilling orders. LR is great for locating images and doing some bulk processing for larger orders before sending the images to Photoshop for final prep for the lab.

For portraits, I straight to LR unless it was a fund-raiser event where I can do as many as 30 mini sessions in one day. In those cases, I start with Photo Mechanic too.

In LR, I cull, crop and adjust as needed and then generate proofs for the website. From there, orders are handled the same way as for sports.

[vsa]

I don't consider myself amateur anymore but not a pro either in the sense that I don't make any money off of my photography... so a hobbyist would be appropriate term I guess. But anyways here's my workflow after taking pictures:

Import
I import photos from my sd card using Lightroom. Usually the same evening I took them or the next day. Just switched to dng format so there will be no sidecar files for the raw images. So far I only use one catalog but it's gotten huge so probably dividing catalogs by year or month would be better idea depending how much you shoot. But anyways, Lightroom organizes photos in to months and days. I don't give photos any tags or keywords (although it is advisable... too lazy usually as I don't shoot all that much).

Getting rid of the crappy photos
I do a quick pass and mark all the good photos that are keepers and will get processed. This takes couple seconds per picture. After that I do a second pass with the marked photos and get rid of some and further mark the ones that are really good. You can use stars or colors for this. I use colors for some reason I don't know.

Post Processing
I go photo by photo editing them as needed. I do what I can in Lightroom and then for more thorough and demanding stuff I switch to Photoshop. Going from larger edits to smaller ones for each photo. Order I snatched from Chris Orwig is as follows:

1. Light, Color & Tone
2. Clean up
3. Enhance
4. Light, Color, Tone & Sharpening

After editing is done
I export the photos as jpg to a folder where I keep all my finished photos (obviously I make a folder for each shoot so everything isn't just in one folder). Time to upload to Flickr or some similar sites if needed.

After couple days or a week I go through the shots again in Lightroom and assess them for one last time and then delete the shitty ones. I probably end up keeping somewhere around 10% of the images I shoot. Nowhere nearly that much gets seen anyone but me.

[Talita]

This thread is like omen. One of my facebook updates a few days ago states that I have no groove. I take so many practise shots and then just edit half of them, they are all over the pc. I`ve created a little system (for saving pre and post processed) over the weekend as I have about 1000 shots to go through for a shooting event I photographed over the weekend.

I have no idea how I`m going to get through them, I`ve seen many people here use light room so I`m going to download the trail and give it a go.

Thanks for all the info.

[Jim Poor]

As long as you are trialing software, try Photo Mechanic too. You can get through and cull out the bad ones MUCH faster with it than LR.

Originally Posted by Talita

This thread is like omen. One of my facebook updates a few days ago states that I have no groove. I take so many practise shots and then just edit half of them, they are all over the pc. I`ve created a little system (for saving pre and post processed) over the weekend as I have about 1000 shots to go through for a shooting event I photographed over the weekend.

I have no idea how I`m going to get through them, I`ve seen many people here use light room so I`m going to download the trail and give it a go.

Thanks for all the info.