What is your photo workflow?
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
I thought it would be cool to share my photo workflow and see what you other photographers do.
I shoot with my Canon 30D strictly in RAW format. Then I hook it up and use Adobe Bridge (yes, I am one of the few who actually use Bridge because I think it has the best RAW download interface) to pull RAW files off the camera, put them in a folder with custom names (based on the project I'm shooting), apply basic metadata (my name and copyright from a template) to the images, and then delete them off the camera's CF card:
Next, I open DxO Optics Pro and select the folder I created in Bridge:
I make my adjustments and then process them in DxO:
Once they're done, if they're part of a "formal" set, I usually upload them to Flickr right from DxO (it can export to Flickr and Lightroom). If not, I quickly open the folder in Explorer to organize them manually. I make a folder called RAW and put the .CR2 images in there (along with the XML and DXO sidecar files), leaving only the finished JPG versions in the folder. That way, I end up with a folder that has the project name (Expo Icrontic 2012, for example) that is full of .JPG versions of the images. If I wanted to go back to the source, the RAW files are in a subfolder of the main one. Having the JPG versions accessible by named folder makes it easy to then go on to share them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, G+, or upload them here to IC.
After that, they go in my long-term Photo folder on my 2tb internal drive:
From there, they get backed up nightly to my 2tb external HD (because I firmly believe that backup MUST be a part of ANY photographer's workflow):
What's your routine?
I shoot with my Canon 30D strictly in RAW format. Then I hook it up and use Adobe Bridge (yes, I am one of the few who actually use Bridge because I think it has the best RAW download interface) to pull RAW files off the camera, put them in a folder with custom names (based on the project I'm shooting), apply basic metadata (my name and copyright from a template) to the images, and then delete them off the camera's CF card:
Next, I open DxO Optics Pro and select the folder I created in Bridge:
I make my adjustments and then process them in DxO:
Once they're done, if they're part of a "formal" set, I usually upload them to Flickr right from DxO (it can export to Flickr and Lightroom). If not, I quickly open the folder in Explorer to organize them manually. I make a folder called RAW and put the .CR2 images in there (along with the XML and DXO sidecar files), leaving only the finished JPG versions in the folder. That way, I end up with a folder that has the project name (Expo Icrontic 2012, for example) that is full of .JPG versions of the images. If I wanted to go back to the source, the RAW files are in a subfolder of the main one. Having the JPG versions accessible by named folder makes it easy to then go on to share them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, G+, or upload them here to IC.
After that, they go in my long-term Photo folder on my 2tb internal drive:
From there, they get backed up nightly to my 2tb external HD (because I firmly believe that backup MUST be a part of ANY photographer's workflow):
What's your routine?
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The old camera HAD to shoot in RAW to get decent shots, but I hadn't yet put the work into getting that down to a workflow. The newerish camera comes out with pretty good JPGs, and I've just been bringing those in, touching up the one's that turned out decent, and going from there. If I want to really use the power of that thing, though, I'm going to have to establish something like what you do.
Someday... all hobbies will have all time.
Once imported I will find the color passport checker and create a color profile for the shoot. I'll apply the profile to all the images then I review the images marking any image I'm interested in with 1 star. Next I review the 1 stars to see if any are good enough to make it to 2 stars, then one last review of 2 stars for any exceptionally good images which get 3 stars.
During the review I'll make some basic edits for exposure, crops, etc, I'll flag images for additional editing, and add keywords to the metadata. After reviewing, I'll edit the flagged images, I try to do most of my editing in LR (since it's parametric and non-destructive) any additional major edits will all be done in Photoshop with 16bit color in ProPhotoRGB resolution 300 (the PSD files are saved in the same folder as the original DNG RAW images). for some images I'll create Virtual copies allowing me to edit the image multiple different styles without needing to create many different image image files.
Images will be put into collections (some collections are automated "smart collections") for future review or export. (collections help me avoid duplicating images for different uses)
Images are maintained in DNG or PSD format, jpegs or png files are created as needed during the export process. These exported files I consider temporary and delete them once they are distributed or exported.
Last of all, I back up source images to an external hard drive.
Everything else gets deleted from disk. If it wasn't good enough to be picked, I don't need to keep it around.
If I'm working on panoramas or HDRs, I'll sync develop settings across the series of photos in use, then export to those tools to get the major result, then reimport to LR or PS for fine-tuning.
If I'm uploading to SmugMug and it's worth specifying a location, i go and geo-tag in SmugMug.
After all's said and done, I back up my catalog three different places, but my photos just stay in RAW format on the NAS, for two reasons: it's RAID 6, so it can suffer two disk losses without a hiccup, and everything I wanted to keep has had its final version stored online somewhere, which means I can get the full file back if needed. As long as I have the LR catalog and the base RAW file, all of my edits are saved there non-destructively.
flag as pick any that i am interested.
do dat post processing, upload to flickr/fb.
things are backed up to an external hdd and a large internal drive using synctoy every week.
it would be good to back things up online, that may be something i look at in the future.