PP Workflow Help

[dankellys]

My current workflow isn't really working for me and I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction to get my photos processed 'correctly'. Here is my current workflow:


- folder structure: ...photography/YEAR/MONTH/shoot name - e.g ...photography/2013/05/seaside (this is already causing problems as sometimes photos don't fit into a 'category' as such I.e landscape with some sea in background...)

- Open Lightroom, open catalog and import all photos from camera to catalog

- Look through all the photos, then give all the ones I want to keep a star rating of 1

- create smart collection for all photos with 1 star, called ToEdit

- select all of these photos and add some basic metadata and keywords

- then go through each of the photos and make any changes in Develop mode

- once I am happy with a photo I give it 2 stars

- once all of my 1 star photos are edited and given 2 stars I create another smart collection called Edited, for all 2 star rated images

- I then go through each image and add individual keywords where needed

- then I export to jpg

- I then look through the exported images in Windows Explorer and pick a selection of my favourites to upload to Flickr


So, as you can see its not a great way of doing things...
The main thing I am not happy with is using the star rating system to select photos I want to edit and have edited. I would like to be able to use the rating system to actually rate my photos!

Secondly, folder structure, would I be better off using /year/month/day rather than naming each shoot? If I do it this way I am going to have to really improve my use of key words aren't I?

Also, keywording. Is there a way in Lightroom to set a global list of keywords to auto apply to an import. I.e I like to tag all my photos with 'Nikon D3200' and 'North East England' etc...

Finally, I never actually delete a shot, no matter how bad, so I am going to quickly fill my drive. How ruthless are you when it comes to separating the wheat from the chaff?

 

[TheDrift-]

my workflow...briefly (& Yes you can add keywords on import!)

import add copyright data and key word,

Keep in folder in year/month/day (can easily find by keyword if need to be more specific),

Delete any bad images that are never going to be used

highlight best images flag as pick (P keyboard shortcut) create smart collection based on this.

Use devolop module/PS on pics as needed eg for a shoot would edit all for client, for a personal shoot I might not devolop any until the next stage...

from picks highlight a few (1-3 maybe) selects these are the best of the best,

These would be for website or port and would be my very best images...again i'd make a smart collection out of these

Its probably a bad habbit but i use the star system to donote where my images are used eg 2 star client, 3 star stock, 4 star flickr, 5 star website

 

[dankellys]

my workflow...briefly (& Yes you can add keywords on import!)

Automatically? Can it be done with other metadata to? So it will add my copyright data and a list of generic keywords without me having to do anything other than click 'Import'? If so, how? Also, is there a way of storing a HUGE list of keywords, then just ticking the ones you want to use?

Keep in folder in year/month/day (can easily find by keyword if need to be more specific),

Think this is the structure I need to start using. Out of curiosity, is it possible to set lightroom to automatically create the folders using this structure using the computers date? Or do you create the folders manually?

highlight best images flag as pick (P keyboard shortcut) create smart collection based on this.

Ah Ha! Thats the thing I was after, a much better way of selection.

Its probably a bad habbit but i use the star system to donote where my images are used eg 2 star client, 3 star stock, 4 star flickr, 5 star website

I like that idea actually, makes a lot of sense.

So, how do you do you exports at the end? Do you then export all of you 2 stars into a folder called 'client', 3 stars into a folder called 'stock' etc etc...? I.E year/month/day/client, year/month/day/stock

 

[dankellys]

Also, am I doing this right...I create a catalog for each shoot, so for example /2013/05/15 will have its own catalog as will /2013/05/14 etc etc... Is that the correct way of doing it. If so, how do you search keywords across ALL of you catalogs?

P.S sorry for all he questions. Thought I had finally got my head around LR...:bang:

 

[TheDrift-]

yes you can add copyright data etc, see the above pic, you can have different presets etc for different things so if you do a lot of similar shoots I guess you could preload a lot of the key words?

to organise i just leave lightroom to organise by date, this gives you the year/month/day format ..(i think..its always been set up this way for me, over the last couple of versions of LR)

...for the selection menthol, I 'borrowed' it from Scott Kelby's LR4 book (good read btw!!)

Dont export to any folder, just use smart collections..

hope that makes sense

 

[TheDrift-]

oh, i just have one big catalogue a year, and archive off after a year....(with the exception of my 4 and 5 stars...which i keep)

 

[dankellys]

Cheers for the replies Shaun, think I need to sit down tonight and have a good go at re-oranising. Mine is an absolute mess, think I will just archive everything off up until now and start a fresh.

Think I will go down the route of 1 catalog per year and make lightroom organise using he date structure, and just use keywords/smart collections for filtering

 

[Spuriousfish]

Lot's of different approaches but the basics of the workflow that I use is as follows:-

1. Import all images using LR - using date/time folder structure.
2. Backup all images to external HDD
3. Images for which GPS data exists are reverse geo-coded to get location data etc. This is done useing Geosetter, not LR.
4. Use the Pick and Reject Flags to sort images into obvious keepers and discards.
5. Delete rejects.
6. Apply additional keywords to remaining imported images.
7. Create Collection Sets of logical groups of shots.
8. Process images + Use the Pick and Reject Flags to sort images again into keepers and discards. Delete as necessary.
9. Within each collection set create a collection for Prints, Slideshows etc

It varies a little from time to time. Most important step is #2. Make a backup

Colin

 

[dankellys]

Lot's of different approaches but the basics of the workflow that I use is as follows:-

1. Import all images using LR - using date/time folder structure.
2. Backup all images to external HDD
3. Images for which GPS data exists are reverse geo-coded to get location data etc. This is done useing Geosetter, not LR.
4. Use the Pick and Reject Flags to sort images into obvious keepers and discards.
5. Delete rejects.
6. Apply additional keywords to remaining imported images.
7. Create Collection Sets of logical groups of shots.
8. Process images + Use the Pick and Reject Flags to sort images again into keepers and discards. Delete as necessary.
9. Within each collection set create a collection for Prints, Slideshows etc

Cheers Colin, going to have to have a proper sit down and play about with it. I have only been using LR for a few weeks and it has already turned into a mess using my current system.

Most important step is #2. Make a backup

Without a doubt, my next 'photography purchase' is going to be a decent external HDD, may even go for a solid-state, depending on my budget.

 

[TheDrift-]

Opps i didnt include my back up procedure.

I use Time machine backups, to an external drive. I also weekly (or daily after an important shoot) back up to a NAS drive.

Monthly I back up to another HDD and kept at a different location.

This means I should have multiple local back ups, should a drive fail. Ultimatley if a disaster where to hit, I would have an off site copy to rely on

 

[Spuriousfish]

Dan....

If you're just going to use the external drive as a backup , then in my opinion an SSD is an expensive overkill.

Pays your money etc

Colin

 

[dankellys]

Thanks for all the advice, think I have it Sussed now. Renamed the parent folder of all of my old catalogs to 'archive' and created a new parent folder called photography so far, so good. I then opened LR and created a new catalog in my photography folder called '2013 catalog'. I then proceeded to import a handful of photos I took last night, ensuring the file structure was 2013/05/14, added my copyright info metadata preset and entered some basic keywords to all the photos on import.

As it happens the photos I imported were taken purely for the sky (to use in future for good photos with rubbish sky's), so I tagged them all as 'sky', and created a Smart Collection for all images containing the keyword 'sky'.

Obviously future imports will involve a bit more work, as I will need to pick the 'keepers' and delete the rubbish ones, make edits, rate them based on what they are going to be used for, export, etc etc... but I think I finally have a workflow which is organised and easy to follow! I can see Smart Collections based on keywords being particularly useful!

Thanks again!