Question about "Workflow" - advice required please!

theMusicMan

theMusicMan

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John
Edit My Images
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Hey All - good morning/afternoon/evening to you :)

I have been experimenting this morning, as I still am unable to determine which gallery script/app I should use to generate and manage the images I want to publish to my domain - however, this is another story! I decided to have a look at how Lightroom itself would create galleries to see what they were like, again - that's another story... :)

In so doing, I started looking to export certain files to preview the gallery and code in my browser and html editor - but many images were 'unable to be exported' because the originals could not be found and Lightroom used the most recent jpg in it's image cache!!

All fine and dandy, but this led me to think of a few questions here;
  1. why couldn't Lightroom find the image, but was still able to display it
  2. why is Lightroom using a cached version of certain images
  3. why does Lightroom not find the originals (on external drive)
  4. Most Importantly: How do you manage your workflow in terms of getting images from your camera, onto your drive, and post processing etc.
Qn 4 is the main one here folks. What should I be doing once I have images on my cameras CF card, ready for 'dealing with'...? As far as I can tell, I could simply move them (RAW format) using MacOSX to a location somewhere on my system, then import them into Lightroom, then work on them... or... should I be using Lightroom itself to accomplish this...?

I have been using the latter, but am now thinking I should change my workflow to the former. When I do an Import from the Camera/CF Flash using Lightroom, the app selects a "Import Images and Convert to Digital Negative" process, and I have no idea if this is the correct process, or the one I should be using.

Last night I also tried exporting all my recent holiday images to DVD for my friend, but out of 780, only 282 were successfully exported. I imagine that tis was due to the same reasons i.e. Lightroom could not find the originals etc - though they exist on my external drive etc.

So - I am considering physically moving all my image files to a specific location on my external drive, then resetting Lightroom to import the lot and reference them from there. Would that do...? is that the way to do these things...?

Long post I appreciate, especially on a Sunday morning, but all advice greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
1) LR can still display the files because the database stores a cache...

2)...because it's a lot faster to keep a preview of the edited image than to recalculate it from scratch every time - there could be hundreds of edits to go through.

3) It sounds like the original location of the images has been changed in some way - folder renamed, moved, etc. You can tell LR where to find the files in the Library module - any folder with missing files should be highlighted. Just right click the folder and select Locate Missing Files... and then follow the prompts.

4) I use the Import in the Library module to copy the fiels from my card to a new location, a folder on my photo drive.

If you re-import everything back in you'll lose the editing unless you export everything with XMP sidecar files to start with. I think you just need to tell LR where the files are located and it should sort itself out.
 
I print my photos only occasionally, most of them go on my website or other websites I am a member of.
My workflow is just exporting the edited raw files into tiffs, do some cropping and editing if necessary (I crop quite often these days, unfortuntely), shrink them (in a batch or one by one if there aren't too many), convert them into jpegs and upload them.
No need to make thumbnails, scripts on my website make them automatically and it's that way on most other website.

EDIT:
I forgot to mention that I download my photos keeping a strict place / date based tree, for example
{photos root directory}/{author}/{place}/{year}/{month number}_{month name}/{date}/{original} (for raw files)
{photos root directory}/{author}/{place}/{year}/{month number}_{month name}/{date}/{edited} (for edited files and exports)

I have some photos by my dad stored on my HDD as well, hence the author part.

I do a backup once in a while on a DVD, usually when there's lots of new photos I wouldn't want to lose.
 
For question 4

I create a folder with the new set of photos, copy all my photos from the CF card across, leaving the CF card alone. now I have 2 copies.

Using lightroom I do my first past, remove (not delete) any that is either blur, extreme over or under exposure, out of focus. Since I know no matter how much i want to save them, it'll still look bad.

2nd pass I look for either blinking in people if its portrait, duplicates, elbow/objects too much in the way.

3rd pass I look for more subtle changes, is there one photo that does the same job that another one already does but better? Is that photo "fit" into the collection?

By this time I would usually get rid about half, so save time later on.

Then 4th pass I start adjusting exposure and may be crop it a little. And all along I keep the 3 points above in mind, and would still drop any photos that's "sub standard".

If I apply it to a wedding I did yesterday, came home with about 1100 photos, first pass took it down to 820, 2nd dropped it to 710, 3rd pass now its on 660. Which is Wayyyyyy too many to process and to give them. I need to at least half it to about 300.
 
I take all my RAW files and open them in Rawshooter. I edit them there doing stuff like saturation and exposure compensation mostly. Then I output the ones I've decided to keep and edited to a folder as 16-bitt TIFF files and open them in photoshop for cropping, sharpening and also resizing and watermarking them for TP. I change them to 8-bitts and save them as JPEGs. When I've done this with all the shots I want to keep I just format the card.
 
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