What's your workflow?

[jorgemonkey]

This was brought up in one of the threads in the Sports forum. I thought I'd go ahead and share mine with ya'll.

1. Take a bunch of photos. A buddy came over today who needed some photos for a project, so my wife, him, and me all went out for an hour or so and had some fun.

2. While out in the field in camera I delete all the obvious blurry photos, or ones I know won't make the cut. Once I get to the laptop or my home PC, I'll use ACDSee to copy my photos from my CF card to the computer. I download them into a folder, and they're all sorted by the date they were taken.



3. Once they're downloaded, I go through each image and then either delete or keep the image. Once I've gone through that, I'll batch rename the files by date.



4. Once they're renamed, in this case I'm working with RAW, so I'll open up the images in Nikon Capture, and adjust WB, tones, and anything else that needs to be adjusted. When I'm shooting JPEG I skip this step. Once those adjustments are made, I'll save the adjustments to the NEF, and save a copy as a JPG in a folder called "Processed".




5. Depending on the image, I can either upload them as proofs to my site, or I'll open them up in Photoshop & do any other tweaks as needed.



6. Which gives me the (5min edit) final photo:



7. Once I've worked on the images, the top folder (In this case 11.18.07) gets cataloged & tagged by whats in the image, then I move the folder to the 2nd internal hard drive on the computer, and a second copy is made to my external HD. Once a week (or every 2 weeks when I'm lazy) I plug in my 2nd external HD, backup everything to it, and unplug the drive and keep it in a place where it will be grabbed if I have to run out the door in case of fire, earthquake, or anything else.

8. Photos that are really important (Old family slides, other family photos) get DVDs burned and copies sent to 3 different family members.

[jeffp]

I shoot RAW, so I take all the RAWs off my cards and put them onto my computer. Next, I import them into Lightroom and render the previews. The things I shoot don't have tight deadlines, so I have plenty of time to do other things while all this is going on.

After the previews are rendered, I go into loupe mode and start flagging as either toss or keep. I filter out the toss, and start doing the initial tweaking in Lightroom. I flag any images that need special editing, then do an export after it's all done. Then, I go back into Photoshop to get the ones that need special treatment.

The folder of raws and exported jpegs gets labeled and a copy made onto my backup drive.

[JSPhoto]

Just a quick comment on nameing files & folders. I name the folders using the date, but I start with the Year, that way it keeps everything from that year together and makes locating a 5 year old folder easier. Basicaly the folder names are ltke: 2007_11_18 GC vs EH GBB which means it is a girls basketball game between Greenfield Central and Eastern Hancock. I make the folders this for another reason as well as it helps me keep track of what the paper(s) pay me for, especially if ut's for a day I shoot from 2 to 7 events in a single day, and if for some reason they need a different shot of a specific player I can just look for the school and sport and it's easier to locate. Same goes for races, so if I need a shot from say Pole Day at the Indy 500 I can just look for 2007_05 and the folder that says Pole Day, while other folders will have "practice day 5" or so forth.

For file numbering I don't use the date or change the camera numbering because the date is part of the folder name and it's in the EXIF as well if I do a date search, which winfows search will find. The file name always starts with JS07 which is my initials and the year and it's done in camera so I don't have to change the numbers.

JS

[jorgemonkey]

I've got my folders setup so if I need to find a photo from say 11/5/2006, I goto the main folder 2006 -> 11.2006 -> 11.05.06 -> whatever the file name is.

I'd gotten in the habit of renaming the files so when someone orders a photo I know exactly where file 2006-11-05-915 is. I've gotten so used to this setup now I might have a mental breakdown if I tried to change it

[JSPhoto]

I've got my folders setup so if I need to find a photo from say 11/5/2006, I goto the main folder 2006 -> 11.2006 -> 11.05.06 -> whatever the file name is.

I'd gotten in the habit of renaming the files so when someone orders a photo I know exactly where file 2006-11-05-915 is. I've gotten so used to this setup now I might have a mental breakdown if I tried to change it

You can do a Windows search by date and it will bring up anything with that date. For me it would take a while though as I have 3 internal drives and 5 external USB drives with 8 years of photos. I actually have a list on the side of the computer that shows what years are on which drive which helps if someone calls wanting a photo from 2001 at the speedrome. I can look at the list and see they are drive h and cut the search time considerably. You'd be amazed how many calls I get for old photos, I even had one guy call to see if I had anything on AJ Foyt last week. I just happened to have set up so I can type a name and it pops those names up and from that he choose one from a race at the State Fairgrounds of AJ and his son Larry from 2003. That photo is now going into a magazine and book from what the person said.....and a nice check to boot Using the exif data to help search for a name, event etc. takes some work to set up but it really helps if you are looking for specific things. I only have 100,000 more to set up

JS

[desmo13]

I shoot raw. copy from card to a folder named for the event, or occasion.
Use canon utility to look at the RAW. ones I like, I send to photoshop, tweak, crop etc. I then save them to a folder called "post" in the folder where the raw files were. I post a few up here, the rest on my photosite.

Then, I delete all the unusable RAW images, batch convert to jpeg to another sub folder called "proof." I then upload those to my photosite.

From time to time, I use ACDSee to look at those, if I see one I feel I can do something with, then I grab the RAW and start to work.

All Raw files are saved on an external HD. Edited photos are on my site, laptop and desktop.

[mjs1973]

I shoot RAW, and dowload to my PC using Zoombrowser. This automatically puts them in a folder with the date the image was taken (2007_11_20).

Once they are downloaded, I use Adobe Bridge to look through them. Anything I want to work with I rate with 1 to 5 stars depending on how good I think they are.

Once I have rated them, I sort them by the rating so the ones I want to work with are all togethr. I make whatever adjustments I need to in Adobe Camera Raw, and then open the image in PS CS2.

In PS I will do what ever tweeks I want, and always on a new layer. If I'm doing a curve adjustment, I do it as an adjustment layer. If I'm cloning something out, I do it on a copy of the BG layer. Once my tweeks are done, I sharpen the image, and save back into the same folder as a .PSD file. From there, if I want to post it online, I will flatten the image, change to 8 bit, resize and save as a .JPG in a seperat folder on my desktop, leaving the layerd .PSD file where it is. If I want to print, I flatten the image, change to 8bit, and save as a full size .jpg to a temp folder on my desktop. I don't print anything at home, so this folder is then uploaded to www.mpix.com so I can order prints.

Eventually all of the files get keyworded in Bridge (to make them searchable), and I update the folder names with what's in each folder (2007_11_20_Deer_Birds). All files are then saved on an external HD, and burned to 2 separate DVD's. One DVD stays at the house, stored vertically, in a dark place, the other is stored at work, vertically in a dark place. Once I know all the CD's are readable, I delete the files from my PC's hard drive.

Burning disc's and keywording the images is a major pain in the butt, but it needs to be done. It is next to never that I will delete anything in the field, and it has to be a totaly unrecognizable image to get me to delete it once it's on my computer.

When the bank acount builds up again, I want to start using Lightroom.

[SmartWombat]

When the bank account builds up again, I want to start using Lightroom.

It potentially replaces two or maybe three programs in your workflow.

Zoombrowser - replaced ... can import direct from camera/memory card on connection/insertion
Adobe Bridge - replaced ... use Library to review them, rate 1-5*, flag picks, colour flags
Adobe Bridge - replaced ... Gallery or Loupe mode filter by rating, flag, colour, keyword or metadata
Adobe Camera Raw - replaced ... Library for quick adjustments
Adobe Camera Raw - replaced ... Develop for curves, colour HSI, smoothing, sharpening, WB adjust, exposure, shadows, fill light, highlight recovery, color fringeing, vignetting
PS CS2 - used less ... Develop for detail adjustments, crop, rotate, redeye, clone/heal
Adobe Bridge - replaced ... Keywording

Direct link to PS CS2 with edit in CS2 command, will keep original and edit with Lightroom adjustments as the starting point in a 16-bit PSD stacked with the original image.

Export form gallery will export from original raw (.CS2 in my case) or PSD with no further attention; just click, specify parameters (or use preset) and leave to do its thing.
No flattening, no resizing, no making special folders - just put it all in the preset.

[mjs1973]

It potentially replaces two or maybe three programs in your workflow.

That's exactly why I want to start using it. I wish I would have purchased it when it first came out...

[SmartWombat]

I did, and suffered until this latest version.
Seems to be a bit slicker in some places, but still not as smooth as I'd like.

[mjs1973]

I did download the free beta when it came out, but I never played around with it much. I wish I had...