Thread: Digital workflow

It only takes a day of lots of shots to realise how bad your work flow is.

I shot 1700 images in three two hour stints the other weekend and learned a lot about my work flow. Usually I don't take more than a couple of hundred shots.

1. Copy the card to new folder on your hard disk (as a backup).
2. Import the folder's contents to your image library area. Name the folder something like: <location>_<event>yyyymmdd.
3. As part of the import rename the images something like <location>_<event>yyyymmdd_<index>
4. Once you've imported the images bring up your photo library software and go through and rate the images. I do this as a 3 point system - reject, maybe (no star), keep (5 star). There should be a reject rating which will actually hide the images from the viewer unless told otherwise.
5. Show only the rejects and delete them (files and all - remember you have a backup).
6. Show only the maybes. Rate these according to what to do: 1 star = needs cropping, 2 star = needs exposure correction or reject
7. Repeat the reject phase
8. Show only the 1 star images. Go through all these and crop them and rate the new image version as 5 star
9. Show only the 2 star and edit to fix these then rate the new images as 5 star.
10. Purge the older versions of the editing stacks and you are left with 5 star images
11. Go through all the images and clean up, enhance etc before sharpening and saving if required.
12. Remove the image ratings and go through and reassign a 0 to 5 star rating.
13. Put card back in camera and format it.
14. Backup the image library to an external hard drive.
Done! Phew that didn't take to long.

If you have a Mac iPhoto or Aperture (especially v3) are very good workflow packages. I don't know the Canon software but Adobe's Lightroom is also a good option. PSE isn't that great, mainly for the reasons you state and v8 really is bad.

Do a search on photographic work flows and you should find some video tutorials on the web.

Thanks Derek. Great advice

Take a look at a Bibble too.. Bibble Labs - Professional Photo Workflow Software

I've been using it for years. Its great.

Dec

I was trying to think of others. Bibble is good.

Another option is something like Photo Mechanic: Camera Bits, Inc.

• I import all images to library.
• I look through all images quickly and mark the ones I want to keep with a coloured flag if I want to keep to more than one area I use different coloured flags
• once all selected I only show the non highlighted ones and delete.
• I then select to show the highlighted ones
• I select all and in the library name tag, type the subject of the photo's and sync all metadata (which is only selected to sync the library tag)
• I can now get all these photo's up in my library with one click. (at a later date should I want to revisit)
• I then go through and edit which ever photo's I want under the develop tag
• then export all to photobucket (if I'm putting them on the forum otherwise I just export to a folder on my drive)
• Done

Originally Posted by dullbird

[LIST][*]I import all images to library.

Define "Library" please

Depending on the application you use the images will be automatically or manually catalogued into either a directory tree on the hard drive or to a database or a combination of both.

This forms your library of images.

Originally Posted by dm_td5

Depending on the application you use the images will be automatically or manually catalogued into either a directory tree on the hard drive or to a database or a combination of both.

This forms your library of images.

I was afraid you'd say that. The browser in PSE7 does this which is fine as long as I use it alone. It gets confused easily and for some reason or other often refuses to show pics in a directory it has already catalogued.