How can I improve my workflow?

[kmontano]

OK so first off a little background on me; I am a 16-year-old High School sophomore who is heavily involved in extracurricular activities including yearbook and newspaper as a photographer. As of late I have been taking a lot of photos at sporting events and other school functions. Just this past weekend I took over 1000 photos of our Jazz Band's trip to Ohio. So what I would like to know is if anyone has any tips or plans for me so that I can more easily manage and streamline my photo workflow. The photo organizing software is picasa 3 for Linux so please keep that in mind. Thanks!

[teaking]

First off you will probably need to weed out some pictures based on what ever standards you are going to set only you will know this as you have an idea of what style your aiming for. So for example composition wise there may be a series of 4 similar pictures and you may only need ! so 3 go based on the composition. Try to keep your strongest pictures think of it as "which one would I actualy print" as in todays digital world its so easy to fill a hard drive and never go back to a picture if you would actualy take the time to print one then its usualy a good picture.

As for work flow theres so many way, I would first think "is your style artistic" if so cropping may influence a lot of decisions later for you so cropping maybe one of the first ont he list. Where as alot of others crop near the end. It sualy along the lines of and then find what suits you best:

Capture sharpen (not everyone does personal choice)
Colour correction
Exposure
Saturation
Artistic Editing/Retouching
Content Sharpening (not everyone does personal choice)
Cropping
Re-Size
Sharpen (always sharpen after re sizing if not resizing then dont apply this sharpening.
Output Sharpening (this is usualy for printing ask your printer what they suggest)