...and so far it's worked great. I imagine there's lots of posts on this topic. For many people, maintaining enough backup copies and naming the files properly are the greatest challenges. I:
1) copy the CF cards to CD-ROM using a card-to-CD burner by RoadStor. It's one CF card per CD-ROM.
2) copy the CF cards to a matching directory on my computer. I name each of my CF cards with a letter ("A", "B", etc.) and name an "Unedited" directory called "Card A", "Card B", etc. No alteration of the files, no rotation or deletion, occurs in the "Unedited" directory.
3) Copy the "Unedited" directory to an "Edited" directory.
4) Copy both "Unedited" and "Edited" directories at this point to my server computer (or external drive).
5) Now go into the "Edited" directory and delete bad photos. Do NOT, repeat, do NOT rotate or edit at this point, only delete the unsalvagable photos.
6) I rename each "Card A", "Card B" directory's files using ULead's PhotoExplorer program. The naming convention is HHMMx_1234. HHMM means the time the photo was taken in 24hr format. The "x" is the card letter. The "1234" is the number the camera assigned to the image. I remove the "DSC" or "IMG" the camera puts in the name and replace it with the "HHMMx" prefix. For a photo taken at 5:15pm using Card F, the name turns out to be 1715F_1234.jpg. Using this format ensures that photos, even taken with two different cameras, are shown in time-of-day order and do not collide (as long as you don't have two CF cards with the same letter).
7) I copy all the photos of each card's directory from the "Edited" directory into a combined directory. You can choose to edit them now or categorize them. I choose to categorize them (for weddings) into directories called "Reception", "Ceremony", "Cake", etc.
8) After editing is complete, I copy the Edited directory to my server and/or external drive. Be sure to delete the external drive's directory first as you may/may not delete some photos during the editing process.
NOTE: JPEGs don't update their thumbnail images once the file is created. This means that if an image is dark or has incorrect color, the thumbnail will still show the original errors/flaws even though you've fixed the image. To solve this (i.e., so that my thumbnails match the final image), between steps #6 and #7 I convert the images to a non-JPEG file format such as Photoshop (.PSD). I edit and save using Photoshop format, NOT JPEG. Only when all editing is complete (between steps #7 and #8), I do a batch conversion from Photoshop format to JPEG. This creates a new JPEG file with a new thumbnail.
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