Workflow - Lightroom, Explorer, Flickr

[OneRingShort]

I am borderline obsessive compulsive when it comes to maintaining files. My hard drives are covered in folders tucked within folders. I've managed to keep everything incredibly tidy, with the exception of my pictures.

Maintaining my pictures is something I haven't quite figured out yet because of it's an atypical situation for me. They are used by so many different programs or in so many locations I'm not sure how to handle it. A quick rundown of how my flow works:

• I take my pictures (usually in RAW) and import them into Adobe Lightroom.
• Adobe Lightroom copies them into a catalog.
• I edit pictures as necessary using Lightroom and pick my favorites.
• I export my favorite pictures from the shoot into an array of folder in My Pictures.
• I upload the pictures to my Flickr account.

Problem 1: I only export my favorite pictures - the ones I feel proud of for taking - because those are the ones I want people to see. Sometimes I'll get several pictures that I wish turned out better. I like the content of the picture, but when I look at it, I may think "It's okay, but it doesn't really live up to my standards." They are still in the catalog, but they don't get seen in Irfanview or Windows Explorer when I share my pictures. While people get to see the best pictures, they don't get to see the whole story, and this bothers me - I'd love to just go back and retake the picture, but a lot of times, I can't.

How do you handle this? Do you just export all your photos regardless of if they turned out how you wanted or not, or do you keep the not-so-good ones somewhere else, or maybe only put the good ones on Flickr?

Problem 2: File naming is another thing I'm compulsive with. Almost all my files are a short yet descriptive name, and if there are multiple with that name, I apply a series number afterwards. I don't go through and rename each picture based on content: I typically name them by location. For example, rather than "Giraffe", "Lion", "Elephant"; I'll do "San Diego Zoo 01". Where this get's tangled up is when things start falling under multiple categories. I'll have a folder for "San Diego Zoo" inside "California", as well as a folder for photographs of friends or family. But what do I name a picture of a family member I took at San Diego Zoo, and which folder do I put it in? I don't want duplicate copies, and I even tried experimenting with file shortcuts.

I'm thinking the solution may be with tags, but the idea is rather intimidating to go through and try to tag all my pictures. If I do that, I'd have to be consistent with terminology and how specific I make the tags.

How do you name your pictures? Where do you keep them and how to arrange your folders, if at all? If tagging is the way to solve this, how would you go about tagging a large library of pictures? Does tagging reduce your need for folders, or make it easier to find pictures outside of Lightroom?

TL;DR Version: I can't find a good way to organize my folders. Do you have a way that works really well, and if so, can you share?

Disclaimer: I did do some searches of the forums and the articles here, but I didn't find exactly what I was looking for. If this has already been asked, please forgive me.

[jdepould]

Keep everything in LR, export only the files you're using somewhere.

Here's how I do it, which may or may not be helpful. I use presets for most everything except toning on individual images.

Shoot ...

LR ingest:
-rename with shootname_date_time-sequence
-apply camera and ISO-specific develop presets (e.g. D700 - low ISO)
-apply my standard metadata (copyright, name, etc.)
-keyword (important!)
-whole shoot goes into one subfolder in LR (date_shootname), subfolders organized by year

LR edit:
-quick pass to flag anything I think I might use
-delete anything completely unusable
-add any additional metadata (location, generic caption, etc.)
-second pass to one-star my selects
-crop and tone my selects
-apply metadata to individual images (specific captions, location, titles)

LR web export:
-images get resized and watermarked on export (JPEG)

LR to anywhere else:
-PSD to Photoshop (if I'm sending to PS, I'll usually skip sharpening and denoising)
-DNG to an editor
-TIFF or JPEG to printer

If Photoshop, re-import finished PSD for cataloging.

Everything stays in the LR catalog. I delete exported files after they're uploaded/sent or whatever. I have one LR catalog for all my photos--68,289 as of last night--it's searchable and filterable. That means I can find stuff quickly.