Lightroom workflow and photo organization

[CharmCityRob]

Hey everyone - I am just wondering how everyone uses Lightroom. I just ordered a D90 and my wife really wants to make sure photos are cataloged and easily accessible for her. I was trying to figure out if LR would be easy enough for her or if I should export the keeper photos to Adobe Elements for her. I don't know whether or not I will shoot RAW or JPG but I am assuming RAW and I anticipate my workflow being something like this:

Capture
Import
Accept/Reject (Delete rejected)
Tag
Export for Adobe PSE?
Publish (Email, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc)


As far as folder structure on the hard drive, i will probably go with (Year\Shot Date). This is just for family and/or hobby photos. What do you all think and how do you all organize your photos?

[jdepould]

My system:

Import
into one folder (YYYYMMDD_shootname)
rename files (YYYYMMDD_shootname_HHMMSS-#)
metadata present with all of my info
edit/tone
caption selects if necessary
export for web/print/FTP

You can probably skip Photoshop for all but the heaviest pixel editing. If you do need to send to Photoshop, be sure to use a lossless format like PSD or TIFF.

[Free]

G'day,

Seriously, Lightroom is super easy! You're workflow isn't far off, exept you don't really need to export to anything other than jpg for anything by the most advanced editing.

I have set up some personalised export settings for my wife, she selects photos from the library clicks export to either of her 3 presets and the photo gets exported ready to print, go on to her website (needs specific size) or can export to the web in general.

In regard to tagging, you can apply tags to the entire batch during import if you import after each shoot LR also keeps record of your latest import so it's easy to apply tags soon after if you forget.

I've also installed Adobe camera raw presets so the raw files get processed to look exactly like my camera defaults - that probably doesn't explain that very well, but trust me, it's freaking awesome, saves me HEAPS of time not needing to process every single shot.

The fact that all the adjustments are made from one panel of slidey bars makes LR very easy for beginners and software illiterate people to use.

If you can find it, I'd recommend getting hold of a book called "Inside Lightroom 2" by Richard Earney before you get Lightroom as there a few things that help knowing before you set it all up (when and what size to render preview among others)

Hope that helps
Free