organisation and workflow...

elsaspet · Sep 7, 2007

Hi. Here is how I do it:

First and foremost, I back up to two drives.....my epson, and then another external drive.

Load into Lightroom. Pull and Develop there. Transfer to PS.

CS3 to browse and find my folder. Pull 30-70 at a time. Work them up and save to "final" folder.

Take file folder and automate to black and white. Renumber and move to finals folder

Automate all to 4x6 by 600 px. Upload to Collages

Move BW back to BW folder, and burn all three folders (finals, bw, 4x6)

Burn for client, and mail

Transfer files to You Select it and build albums.

Burn album copy for reference (both psd and jpg folders)

Upload jpg folder of album images to collages.

Done!

JHF Photography · Sep 7, 2007

Thanks Elsaspet. Do you store them in your own folders on the drives, or do you just dump them all into Lightroom's database? And if you do put them in your own folders, how do you set them up?

WDodd · Sep 7, 2007

My workflow is almost identical to Switch's except I don't make my own folders anymore I let lightroom do it. I use location and date to name the folders on import and instead of using the folder hierarchy method based on subject I would recommend being very thorough with your keywording. Lightroom is great in that it will let you go back and pull up every photo you have with a yellow flower in it.

I never thought that it was a big deal when I first started but now that I have thousands of photos it is invaluable when I am looking for that picture I took way back when.

I also use the automated backup feature in lightroom to backup to my external hard drive and I burn each shoot onto a CD. I usually do the burn to CD after I am done editing so that I don't lose those photos as well.

Hard drive organization never really was a problem for me either. I have "My Pictures" and then all the folders under that sorted by date and location and sometimes subject. This makes it really easy because the newer pictures which I will be more likely to work with right away will be right at the top of my list.

Hope that helps.

jstuedle · Sep 8, 2007

I still use Nikon view to download into a folder labled with the date of download. View does this automatically, and renames every image with day,date,year, and -0001 to whatever of any card downloaded. I backup my notebooks image files to USB powered external when the gig is over. When I get home I burn a disk, and copy to external archive hard drive. When editing, I save to a folder labeled with name of gig and date. I also have a desk calender/blotter with each gig shot written in the calender for future reference. Its worked for me going on 8 years now. All files are burned and on a bank of external hard drives that are never powered up unless I need to access them. Recent files are kept on drive D: internal until it fills and I need to transfer them. By doing this, the archival external drives are almost never used except to write to, reducing the wear and tear and chance of failure.

JHF Photography · Sep 9, 2007

Thanks for the input, guys (and gals!). It sounds like date and location is a better route to go than what I've been trying to do, I'm going to give it a shot!