Sifting through a days worth of shots... how do you do it???

[Sean Dempsey]

Here's the example:

Today I did about 200 shots at the lake. Mostly portraits, some landscapes, some wildlife.

I get home. Now what? Do I go through and DELETE the crap? or save it? Or just copy the good ones to another folder? What do you guys think?

I was thinking of getting an IDE hard drive, like 200 gigs to store the "archival" junk, but I dunno, do I need to learn to use the delete key? Delete all the ones where the people are making weird faces or out of focus and stuff?

help on organizing and selection would be helpful, thanks!

[Peter_AUS]

In a word "YES", you need to learn to delete, delete, delete and delete. Keeping just the ones you want to keep.

I personally, copy them all off the CF card to directory as original with the directory title as the name of the project, like "lake shots 21-043-04" or something to that effect.

Then I make another directory under that for "processed images", giving the file name, something like "date+what every you want".

After I have done all the processing, I then see what they will look like on the web as jpg files and decide then what I want to show. After that, delete what you don't want, keep the originals of the keepers and the manipulated images plus the files for the web, all in seperate folders under the originals folder.

This way I know where stuff is, as I need it.

I have seperate directories for family and under that individual family members, xmas and under that the individual years, event types and under that different events like swimming carnivals, athletics, netball etc. This helps to keep the house keeping in order.

I do the same with images for the web as I post them up, so I keep all images in the images directory and make individual relevant directories under that directory, this way I can find what I need when I need it and also makes it easier for website development as well.

Hope that helps. And welcome to the best Photography board on the Net.

[another view]

I also don't keep most of what I shoot - same as with slides. What I do is download, edit, then save in a folder with a file name like "20040321_ChicagoStuff". That way the files are listed by date since I put the year first, and I know the location by looking at the file name. Then I burn those to a CD. I've started to make a thumbnails folder, with 400 pixel images so I can find the image I want then grab the right CD.

I've been thinking about a separate drive for storage too because it would be much faster, but probably will still burn the CD's to be redundant.

[Michael Fanelli]

At a workshop many years ago, John Shaw said (paraphrase): "Bad images don't improve with age." With film, you would be lucky to get 1 or 2 images per roll worth keeping. Because digital shooting is just about free, it is easy to collect quite a few mediocre or bad images just because you can. Delete. delete, delete!

[Asylum Steve]

It wouldn't be the first time...

This may be a pro-amateur thing, but even when I shot film, I saved EVERYTHING. My original materials take up a relatively small amount of storage space. With digital, and the ability now to storge literally gigs of files on a DVD, space is even less of an issue.

Just my opinion, but I will always disagree with the "bad image don't improve with age" philosophy. Photography is SUBJECTIVE, and you can't always say a photo is either "good or bad". The truth is, many shots fall somewhere in between, and in my case, my opinion of the work I create changes over time.

I occasionally look at shots I took twenty or more years ago, thought then that they were "bad", but now decide that I like them, or there are parts of them I like.

So, did they really get "better"? It's just my way of looking at them or thinking about them has changed. Still, if I had tossed them years ago, I wouldn't be able to us them now, would I? That would be a shame...

I also do a lot of photo-illustration and montage/collage work with my images. Many times, small parts of "bad" photos can be perfect as elements of a larger image or design. IMO, you can NEVER have too large an image reference morgue.

Also, with the amazing capabilities of photoshop, I don't really know the potential of many of my images until I open them and play with them. Again, sometimes it will be months or even years before that little "light" goes off in my head and I suddenly realize how I can use an image. If I got into the habit of spontaneously deleteing stuff, I'd lose a HUGE amount of very usable imagery...

That being said, saving large amounts of image files requires that you be extremely organized, or else you'll go nuts in a hurry. I keep very little of my files on my hard drive. I shoot primarily RAW with 512mb cards, and a single card's worth of originals fits on a standard. CD. So, the first thing I do as I shoot, FIRST THING, is copy my RAW files onto my notebook on location, then burn them onto two discs; one master, one backup. These are my digital "negatives".

When I get back to my studio, I extract the embedded jpegs files form the RAW CD onto my hard drive to use as reference and creating proof sheets of thumbnails. They take up relatively little space and are easily loaded and browsed.

When I'm ready to work on images, I again use the RAW CD, convert the shots I think are good (at the moment, anyway - GRIN) to psd (photoshop) files, and save them in a seperate folder on my hard drive.

My main image folders on my computer are divided into the three types of photography I do: commercial, gallery, and personal. The commercial folder is divided into clients, the gallery folder into exhibition projects, and the personal folder into subjects. Like some of the others here, I incorporate the shoot date and subject into my file names.

If you're going to keep a large amount of images on your hard drive, even if your folder and file system is good, you may want a seperate image organization program. I've started using Adobe Photoshop Album, and though it's a consumer product, I find that it does a good job of keeping track of everything by letting you "tag" all your pics with keywords or dates. This in turn, lets you find them quickly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all against EDITING your work. It's a very important process. It's just that I do my editing when I work with and print my images, not when I decide what originals to keep...

Here's the example:

Today I did about 200 shots at the lake. Mostly portraits, some landscapes, some wildlife.

I get home. Now what? Do I go through and DELETE the crap? or save it? Or just copy the good ones to another folder? What do you guys think?

I was thinking of getting an IDE hard drive, like 200 gigs to store the "archival" junk, but I dunno, do I need to learn to use the delete key? Delete all the ones where the people are making weird faces or out of focus and stuff?

help on organizing and selection would be helpful, thanks!

[Sebastian]

I have to go with Asylum STeve on this one. I keep everythign I shoot, with the exception of testing shots, those usually get deleted unless they're really cool. They are a very small percentage of all my shooting, however.

[EOSThree]

I don't have quite the workflow Steve has but it is similar. I rarely delete pictures from the card in the camera. It's just too hard to really see what you have, the only ones I delete are the obviously bad ones: clipped highlights or shadows. I save the rest for when I get home and can have a look on the screen. I save most of the ones left in RAW format and transfer to CD when I have enough to fill one. Breeze Browser makes it easy to view files in the RAW format, it is just as fast as viewing Jpegs.

[Norman]

I keep everything, unless I made a mistake at the time of taking the shot, i.e. expousure way off. The thing I find is photography is recreational for me, I want to constantly improve & learn the digital process. So a lot of my stuff could be & should be classed as snapshots so I keep them especially with people on the photo's, because of the memory factor.I agree with Steve you may have elements of the pic which is good, so I keep them & do pretty much what the others say, with saving to CD & the hard drive.

I use ACDSEE as an image browser, because I got it free with a printer, I also have an ancient confuser which does not operate photoshop elements 2 quickly, but the ACDSEE is superfast at browsing,I also like the priniting side of the programe for rapid touch up & printing for photo's for the family. So I'm on the KEEP side, storage is cheap!

[paulnj]

i read a few lines of most posts.. so i am saying this on my own

keep what you think is worthy of keeping! whether it's a blurry mom on vacation, or a perfect image!

remember that you will enjoy seeing your improvement over last years imagery!