Photography workflow?

I

iroc409

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 17, 2006
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Some time ago I read a pretty good blog post on workflow for photo intake, tagging info (copyright, data, etc), naming the files, etc.

I guess I didn't save it, and have tried searching but can't find the site. Since I really need to clean up my stuff, and am working on importing a bunch of new stuff, I am looking for ideas on creating a proper workflow.

What do you use, or how does your work flow happen, from pulling images off the camera, to sorting them and putting them into a file structure in storage?
 
I would definitely be interested in reading how more pro's setup their work-flow. If you find any good articles, post up some links!

My work-flow is fairly simple and possibly a bit antiquated by today's standards of cloud-based storage and social-media focus, but it works great for me as a semi-pro enthusiast who tends to shoot massive sets of photos, and it keeps everything very well organized.

1 - I shoot raw only. I don't worry about naming structure in the camera. I only have 1 camera, but I have learned that shooters who use multiple cameras will always set custom file-name in the camera so they know which camera it came from. It is also a good idea to set your copyright info and any other personal data in the camera if your camera supports it.

2 - Copy files to PC. Folder structure is extremely important. NEVER use "My Documents/Pictures" or any default folders on your computer, as those can become inaccessible or complicated if you move to another computer etc. Use multiple hard-drives in your processing rig, and keep a separate drive for photo storage, and a separate drive for page-file etc for best performance. So when I copy files to my computer, I make a new folder for each shoot, add the date(s) and specific name in the file folder. For instance:

D:/Photo/YYYY_MM_DD_Shoot-or-Location-Name
(and if multi-day trip or event or just a backup-dump from the camera, start/end dates)
D:/Photo/YYYY_MM_DD-DD_Shoot-or-Location-Name

3 – I use LightRoom (currently still on V4) for processing, which makes the rest of the work-flow wonderfully easy and very customizable. I import my photos into LR from the above-mentioned folders, and having that folder structure in the library takes a lot of the hassle out of finding any photos I am looking for later. I have recently started using the tagging features a little, but for the most part I don’t bother tagging or adding location data etc.

4 – Rate my photos in LightRoom. When you have hundreds or thousands of photos from an event or trip, you don’t want to waste time processing every single one. You want to narrow them down to the best. I have grown to love the 5-Star rating system in LR; so the first thing I will normally do after importing is rate all of them, 1-5 stars. Go through every single photo in the set with my right hand on the arrows, and left hand on the 1-5 keys, and rate every photo 1-5. Be a brutal critic of your own work, rate on a curve, only a very few shots should get 5 stars. Decent shots and those that are unique or significant may get 4 stars. Most shots get 3 stars – the ones that aren’t exciting or unique, they’re just there for backup pretty much. 2 stars means I screwed up the composition or focus, or that the subject moved in an un-flattering way etc. 1 star means I screwed up the exposure or fucus in an un-recoverable way – I normally delete these on the spot unless they’re extremely interesting or unique in some way, so I don’t keep many one-star photos around.

5 – Processing. Depending on how many photos are in the set and how many I actually want to use, I start developing the 5-star photos, and I may only do the 5-star ones. If I want more photos for the end-product, I’ll go to the 4-stars after the 5. I very rarely get around to processing the 3-star shots. In the develop phase I normally just go down the list of sliders in LR starting with white-balance, exposure, etc. If I’m doing a large set of photos, I may do the same slider on all of them before going to the next slider, bringing them all to the same state of completion together, as this usually proves more efficient than going through every single step for each one then having to start over each time. I have also just recently started using the copy/paste actions between photos for more speed and consistency in my processing.

6 – Publishing depends on what I’m doing with the photos, but I generally put them in a sub-folder in the above-mentioned dated/named folders so I can find previous renders. On very rare occasions I take images into PhotoShop after publishing to do further touchups or manipulations.

Hope that helps! I’m sure I forgot a few steps – may add more in here later.
 
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Anh N. said:
I really like the workflow from Aaron Nace, founder of Phlearn. Here is the video The Ultimate Guide to Workflow in Lightroom and Photoshop
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Learned something, although I don't really use Lightroom for my workflow. I may use a bit more of his concepts in directories though.
I think what I do is somewhat similar to madFive and has some aspects of Aaron's workflow as well.


I have a folder structure that goes something like this:

X:/YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD-DD - Shoot Name/Capture
Where the Raws go
X:/YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD-DD - Shoot Name/PSD
Where export PSD's go
X:/YYYY/YYYY_MM_DD-DD - Shoot Name/Output
Where web sized jpegs go

===

If what I'm doing is going to end up on the web somewhere, I usually fire up Adobe Bridge and tag the bezeesus out of everything in the Capture directory before I move to the next step of opening Capture One.

===

I pick selects in Capture One, and then of course use it to sort. I also do the raw image editing in Capture One before export/saving whatever it is into the PSD subdirectory. (Some top tips, use ProPhoto RGB, it's the largest color space. I also do everything in 16 bit, file size be damned).

===

I edit everything until it's done in Photoshop, then I make a jpeg that gets dropped into the Output directory.

===

If what I'm doing doesn't require Photoshop to edit, as in, something that I probably will only spend 5-10 minutes with, then I use Lightroom. I've learned that different types of work require different levels of post. I still spend 8+ hours on single photos, but I can't do that with every piece of work that crosses my desk.

If I have a single shoot that I have to grind through 1000+ images for, then I use Photo Mechanic. As I would say it's the best for having to deal with massive amounts of files.






In terms of answering some of your other questions, I don't bother to rename anything until it reaches the output step, although I should probably do that at the PSD level. Generally the file names are long and designed to be picked up by web crawlers. They go something like this:

Jeremiah_Bostwick_-_Name_of_subject_-_yyyy_mm_dd_-_Photo_type_twodigitnumberfororder.jpeg
 
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Thanks for sharing, there are some good ideas. I really need to get a better folder structure down. I'm not a pro, but sometimes going back through stuff I occasionally have difficulty remembering specifics about events and so forth.

I actually use a derivative of the "My Documents" folder. I've always kept my files stored basically separate from the OS, and years ago I exported the documents to either a separate hard drive, or my server when I built my first one several years ago. All my files go into a "\\share\iroc409\Pictures\" folder. They reside on a ZFS server, so they are safe from the usual My Docs issues.

One of things the blog posts used was, I believe, an open-source program to batch modify EXIF data on the images. I don't think it was DigiKam, but the workflow they had involved updating all of that in the files. Maybe it's not necessary, if you're only going to have a certain amount of images "for export". I really wish I would have saved that blog, but it seems like I saved a text file of it, or something.

One thing I have started to do as I archive my negatives is created a text file template to toss in the folder with the files, to help me remember. My film stuff is pretty old, so I don't remember everything, but I add as much as I can. This is the template--it is nothing big:

Code: 
Subject: ---
Date Taken: Month, Day, Year
Film/Processing: Film & processing data

Description:
------------

Blah blah blah
 
I am a big fan of Lightroom and follow a similar workflow as madFive. The tutorials on Lynda.com helped me get up to speed. It's important to understand how it works as a database management tool, not simply a batch photo-editor (although more intuitive and easier to use than Photoshop).
 
GeekHeart said:
I am a big fan of Lightroom and follow a similar workflow as madFive. The tutorials on Lynda.com helped me get up to speed. It's important to understand how it works as a database management tool, not simply a batch photo-editor (although more intuitive and easier to use than Photoshop).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, it looks promising.

Yeah, I'm used to just importing an image and working on it, where this is not really the case with Lightroom--you really have to use the tool to manage the images. Somewhat frustrating, but just something to learn.

DigiKam is similar, but apparently doesn't like network shortcuts over mapped drives, as I am having a difficult time with it importing my files unfortunately. It looks pretty impressive, but "not quite there" from I've been reading.

My existing software is PS Elements "Antique Edition" because it's so old. I used to do a lot of Photoshop, but kind of got out of it around the change to CS.
 
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