organisation and workflow...

[lkavaney]

how do you organise your photographs? how do you organise your work flow? do you sit down and work through all images from that day etc? what is your strategy? I'm really struggling with organisation at the moment so any help is greatfully received!! thanks so much!! :hugs:

 

[photoman720]

how do you organise your photographs? how do you organise your work flow? do you sit down and work through all images from that day etc? what is your strategy? I'm really struggling with organisation at the moment so any help is greatfully received!! thanks so much!! :hugs:

Adobe lightroom works great for me.

 

[lkavaney]

thanks! what does lightroom allow you to do? Ive not looked into that programme before.

 

[sabbath999]

I use iPhoto for my image organization, although I have lightroom and aperture as well. Please keep in mind I do critter photos, and my workflow would make absolutely no sense to somebody shooting portraits or landscapes.

I have a LOT of pictures to process though.

My workflow is this. On the way home from our shooting, my wife goes through each camera and deletes the obviously bad shots (out of focus, critter turned around, etc.)... when shooting a lot of continuous frames of animals, there is a TON of waste. If in doubt, she leaves it.

I go into the computer and import the files into iPhoto (you could just as easily use Lightroom for this, I just am used to iPhoto) and scroll through the images, nuking most of the rest of them, saving only the best light, best composed and clearest images.

The few that are left are then put into a folder to be organized, cropped (you have to shoot a bit wide on animals, since they tend to move quickly and without any warning as to which direction they are going) and any post processing done.

Then I empty the trash.

I end up using about one in every 100 taken, although I have a lot more usable images than that.

 

[Newfive]

I put my in files accourding to day/month/year, and then back them up on CD/DVD.

Every day I shoot I then download to laptop and place in new folder. If I change, clean, cropped or watermarked then I make a new sub-folder in that file to hold them, so no orginal photo folder is touched.

Hope that helps.

 

[theusher]

Having used Light Room, Aperture, iPhoto, manually making folders...I find that Aperture is the best for raw organization. Light Room is very close to being integrated into photoshop, and it's pretty nice too. iPhoto is good if you are more of a recreational photographer, plus it's free with Macs.

Google also has Picassa which a few friends of mine love.

 

[Jon, The Elder]

I shoot for money. We shoot 2 day horse events. There is a fairly large volume of shots as my wife and I cover different angles and subjects.

I download lets say, a 2Gb card to ACDSee (ver.7).
After culling through and deleting unwanted files, I batch rename based on date. so instead of the useless name of IMG_xxxx which tells you nothing, I end up with 'Jul 16-0001' they are numbered sequentially by the software in a matter of a few minutes (I love to watch computers work).
This way no matter how many photos we have (generally several hundred) there is only one with any given date and number. A year from now, I can call it up and sell reprints knowing it is the correct photo for the customer.
I put all the files from a given date inside a folder labeled "July 16". That folder goes into a folder labeled "2007 Horse shows".

Once this is done, I backup to an external hard drive. Periodically I burn a DVD for archiving.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

I don't delete anything, becuase if say, I want to go back and see what I did, I might change my mind on something. I used to delete my files and only save the better ones, but when I looked back at them, wish I hadn't.

I manually make all my folders based on location. All the other info like date, time, whatever, is in the exif data. I than import into lightroom, do my batch processing, and if need be, export the good ones into CS2 for the more complicated processing and do each one at a time.

When i'm done, I save the working file with all layers, and save another one resized, watermarked, and bordered for web use in another sub-folder in case I want it for web use now, or in the future.

 

[Garbz]

If you just need the organisation part of things Lightroom is overkill. Although it is a brilliant application designed to handle everything from taking photos off your camera, processing, organising, and publishing.

A free alternative for organising and publishing images is Google's Picasa.

 

[Newfive]

FYI read fine print of usage of Google's Picasa, you post a picture you give up all rights to that photo.

 

[Alpha]

I use Extensis Portfolio 8. I love it.

http://www.extensis.com/en/products/asset_management/product_information.jsp?id=prod60006

 

[WDodd]

I don't delete anything, becuase if say, I want to go back and see what I did, I might change my mind on something. I used to delete my files and only save the better ones, but when I looked back at them, wish I hadn't.

I manually make all my folders based on location. All the other info like date, time, whatever, is in the exif data. I than import into lightroom, do my batch processing, and if need be, export the good ones into CS2 for the more complicated processing and do each one at a time.

When i'm done, I save the working file with all layers, and save another one resized, watermarked, and bordered for web use in another sub-folder in case I want it for web use now, or in the future.

Exactly what I do. I use the Lightroom "Put in Subfolder" function and use the subject/location/date to title the folder.

 

[lifeafter2am]

I use Lightroom in much the same way. I put them in subfolders based on location and date. I use ALOT of tags in my photo's, that is my big organization tool right there.

For the second part of your question: I sit down and just go though all the photos of the day. With Lightroom you can assign each photo a rating, which I do with the ones that I want to use as final prints. Then throw them into CS3 if I need to do major edits, etc.

 

[JHF Photography]

I don't delete anything, becuase if say, I want to go back and see what I did, I might change my mind on something. I used to delete my files and only save the better ones, but when I looked back at them, wish I hadn't.

I manually make all my folders based on location. All the other info like date, time, whatever, is in the exif data. I than import into lightroom, do my batch processing, and if need be, export the good ones into CS2 for the more complicated processing and do each one at a time.

When i'm done, I save the working file with all layers, and save another one resized, watermarked, and bordered for web use in another sub-folder in case I want it for web use now, or in the future.

I know this is an older thread, but I found it with the search and thought I'd dig it up rather than start a new one.

Switch, I'm in the process of overhauling my organization structure, and I'd love a little more info from you. I currently use a system very similar to yours - download the cards to manually made folders, import to lightroom, etc. Where I'm a bit stumped is how to name my folders. I've been micro-managing them, trying to put pictures into very specific category folders and sub-folders (eg. Nature/Closeup/Flower) but I find this isn't working very well (I've got a picture of a bee on a flower... bug folder or flower folder? lol - see the issues with this system?)

So my question is - you name every folder by the location the shoot was done? What happens when you revisit a location? How specific do you get with the break-down? I know I can keyword everything once I get into Lightroom, so finding the stuff later isn't really the problem... but I really like my hardrive to be as organized as possible too.

I hope this makes sense.... the brain's a little foggy right now, it's getting late.... any advice would be great, if you need any clarification, just ask!

 

[JHF Photography]

Anybody else want to toss an opinion in? Doesn't just have to be Switch (but I gotta say, Switch, I love your work). I'd like to hear from people who manually organize their pictures into folders.