No time to process photos

Grendel

Grendel

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Paul
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I’m having a real problem with time management at the moment when it comes to processing my photos. I’m suffering from the age old “not enough hours in the day” syndrome. I’ve currently got 14Gb of photos on my PC waiting for me to sift through them to process the keepers, bin the rubbish and print the print-worthy. This includes all my holiday photos from Florida in July. Some of the photos date back a year or more. What I find is happening more and more is that, when I have some spare time, I go out and take photos and download them to my PC when I get back home. I always intend to process them “tomorrow evening”, “when I get home from work” or “at the weekend”. In reality, what happens is that by the time I’m home from work and had something to eat I’m too tired or it’s too late to start processing photos. I have my children to stay every other weekend and at the alternate weekends, by the time I’ve done all I have to do, it’s Sunday evening and another week has gone by without any photos being processed. I’m almost getting to a point where I’m thinking of not taking any more photos until I’ve cleared the backlog, but then I love my photography and I don’t really want to restrict myself in that way!

This is definitely one of the few down sides of digital photography imo. At least with film you take your photos, send the film off to the lab and get your prints back a week later lol!

Does anyone else suffer from this “not enough hours in the day” syndrome when it comes to processing their photos?
 
I used to shoot just RAW all the time but I'm going back to shooting RAW and hi-res JPEG and trying to get into picture styles as much as possible. I'm doing as much as I can now to get it right in camera everytime now. You can use Canons Digital Photo Professional to export 16bit TIFFs that are the same as your picture styles. I'm still not getting it right everytime but I'm getting better and doing less processing now.
 
The time needed to post process photos is a real incentive to spent the time getting it right with the camera first time around!

We're still printing pictures from our Canada vacation last July : there's a whole other trip since then, and the next one is coming up and I expect to take a lot of photos on that one!
 
I bet there is enough time in your household for curry eating, maybe you need to re-assess your prioirities :coat:
 
I must say that since Lightroom I am spending far less time on processing too.

The wedding shots were down to about 400 good ones.. they just needed white balance adjustments and a bit of exposure tweaks then I batched them all as TIFFS ready for printing when the b&g had chosen.

Made a folder of small jgs (batch) to get a slideshow for them to choose.

It really only took me all day Sunday and is now waiting for them.

I wondered if my lack of processing time now was due to better camera technique. Hope so! :D
 
I still haven't done all the processing I wanted to do on pics from yorkshire.... but then if I spent less time reading/posting here.... :thinking: :lol:

Book a weeks holiday sometime in November, it'll be cold and horrible here, so lots of cups of hot stuff [until about 7.30pm at which point you can exchange cup for glass] and process your pics whilst ignoring that wet horrible stuff on the other side of the window that is stopping you going out and adding more to the backlog.....












...hang on, sod it, book a week off now, because its not exactly summer is it! :bang:
 
Another vote for Lightroom here - has dramatically improved my workflow - but I also had to be ruthless and only pick a couple of shots out of a group and basically remove/delete any shots I either wasn't going to use or had imperfections - the rating and disgard filters in lightroom mean I can realistically go through 200 shots in 10 minutes and whittle those down to a possible 20 I will fully process - leaving the ones I have not disgarded for a time when I can't sleep!
 
Lightroom would probably improve my workflow.... if only the stupid program didn't want to catalogue the whole of my drives. And it ground my PC to a halt.... it's no slouch either!
 
chuckles said:
Lightroom would probably improve my workflow.... if only the stupid program didn't want to catalogue the whole of my drives. And it ground my PC to a halt.... it's no slouch either!
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Import only the files you want to edit, and create a Catalogue for each "set"
 
If you want to pay to find that out..... I gave up before the trial expired in February :(

Unfortunately, like all bits of new software like this..... it started to do it before I could stop it and then the mess really started!

Beta versions eh?
 
I must admit I use Lightroom 1.1 and it didn't alter my file structure at all, I'll see if I can find an option that I may have turned off.
 
Yes, same here. I have a folder on my PC called Photos and in there are allt he folders named as Landscapes, etc...and another called RAW with dated ones in.

I only brought all those folders into Lightroom. When it downloads it does so to a new dated folder in teh RAW folder and they all appear in Lightroom too.

If you just click on IMPORT you can import what you like.

The only thing is... like Marcel once said (that makes him sound important doesnt it!!) that once you then output your photo to Landscapes, it isnt in the Lightroom Landscapes catalogue until you actually import that photo from there.
Easy if you are working with a whole folder............but if you output shots all over as they are diffrent...........some macros,.. some holidays, some birds etc........you have to remember where they all went to import them back in!

However I generally only use Lightroom for importing RAWs so I dont bother with the above.

I do have a prob with keywords though. Not all photos you import from one card will have the same keyword so i tend not to put any then they never get keyworded. :(

And I'd like collections too, but dont have any!! :cuckoo:

PS.. you wouldnt think Marcel was important if you see the pic of his face in a swimming hat with a drawn-on moustache!! :lol:
 
PS.. you wouldnt think Marcel was important if you see the pic of his face in a swimming hat with a drawn-on moustache!!
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I don't know, if you asked all the other superheros I think they'd agree with me that the hero's hero would have to be Sportacus. ;)
 
I'm in thr processes of importing absolutely everything into lightroom and then having a nice big cull of the crap that I've been hording on my hard drive. One of the things lightroom has stopped me doing is having multiple file types of the same image on my hard drive. Once uploaded I make some adjustments and leave it at that. I don't see any point exporting them unless they're getting printed and that never happens.
 
So you do adjustments and they stay as raw files where they are on your computer.
How do you know where to look for a peacock butterfly for instance if it is just under a dated folder?

(and dont tell me you dont have that problem because you dont have a photo of a peacock butterfly!!) :lol::D
 
The only way to have real control over finding old images is to spend the time and make the effort to keyword everything properly.

I know this because I don't bother I can't find anything. :embarrassed:
 
dazzajl said:
The only way to have real control over finding old images is to spend the time and make the effort to keyword everything properly.

I know this because I don't bother I can't find anything. :embarrassed:
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:D :lol: :D :clap:
 
My keyword imports don't seem overly reliable either - even though I have assigned a profile that should apply on every import, if I don't remember to turn it on, they generally don't get assigned.
 
I try to keyword most things (or atleast I will when I've finished rebuilding the catalogue) but everything at the minute is listed by year, subject (such as autocross which there's loads of or honeymoon) and then date. I don't take that many photos so it's not too hard to find stuff when I need it.
 
Brains said:
I always process immediately and keep up to date. You 've go to get yourself in to a routine.
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You're not wrong there! It's just that time (or lack of) always seems to be an issue for me.

Brains said:
Lightroom has really speeded things up for me too.
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I can appreciate some of the benefits of Lightroom that are being discussed here but for me Adobe Bridge does everything for me that I need :shrug:

I think one of the problems I have at the moment is the sheer quantity of pictures I have to sift through, and I fully recognise that's my own fault for taking so many in the first place lol! I really believe I need to dicipline myself to think about my photography more like a film photographer ie get it right in camera and take less shots :bonk:
 
Kev M said:
I try to keyword most things (or atleast I will when I've finished rebuilding the catalogue) but everything at the minute is listed by year, subject (such as autocross which there's loads of or honeymoon) and then date. I don't take that many photos so it's not too hard to find stuff when I need it.
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Whats the difference between a folder and a catalogue then?
 
What is lightroom ?
 
Janice said:
Whats the difference between a folder and a catalogue then?
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In Lightroom terms a folder is a representation of the physical location on disk where the image files are. A catalogue is a more overarching representation of image locations and all the metadata and image manipulations for those images.
 
Grendel said:
I have my children to stay every other weekend and at the alternate weekends,
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Ah, there's the problem. Stop the kids' visits and there's another four days a month you have available. It will also save you the expense of entertaining the little darlings so you'll be able to afford some new glass in no time.
 
andycwb said:
The time needed to post process photos is a real incentive to spent the time getting it right with the camera first time around!
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Well said that chap! :clap:

I sometimes wonder if we tend to use digital cameras like machine guns - spray everything in the vicinity and hope to hit something. With no cost-per-shot to worry about, there's less incentive to get it right from the start, and almost evereything can be fixed in Photoshop, right?

At least I think I've become more "sloppy" since going digital.
 
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