'The Process' ???

IanD

IanD

Suspended / Banned
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Edit My Images
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Afternoon all,

I'm interested in seeing how others process their files out of the camera.

I am using an Olympus OM1 mkII with 'ORF' files.

I open them in DXO Lab and carry out my processing, then save to a folder on my laptop, as jpegs.

I then drop them into Adobe Bridge as I like that as a viewing tool.

I know it's a bit of each to their own etc, but should I really be saving in stages, as in save the ORF (Raw files), then edit and maybe also then be saving as TIFF files, and only at a point when I need something for printing, web upload etc, then save that TIFF to a JPEG?

How do you all do your thing please??
 
Plug camera in, import through Lightroom to the location I want them in, edit in LR, export to same folder as full size jpeg, open that in PS if it needs clone tool/healing brush/etc (I prefer PS for those jobs) copy jpeg and resize/sign for internet use.
 
Take card out of camera
Put it in card reader (card reader is already connected to computer via hub
Create Folder for images depending on subject / location / genre on relevant SSD (have 3 SSDs with folders for particular shooting types)
Move RAWs to relevant folder (if there are significant number of images in folder on cam card then move entire folder and rename.
Open LR
Open appropriate catalogue (if not already open). Have different Catalogues for different shooting types (about 10 currently)
Import images into LR
Goto Develop Module and edit
 
I save ex-camera raws to a folder on my desktop pc. Then process at my leisure, when the mood takes me, and export as full-res tiffs. The tiffs will be the main archive from which I can repurpose images for different outputs, like print or web, as wanted. But I keep all the raws too - they are then available for re-processing, sometimes years later and long after one has migrated away from the original processing software.
 
droj said:
I save ex-camera raws to a folder on my desktop pc. Then process at my leisure, when the mood takes me, and export as full-res tiffs. The tiffs will be the main archive from which I can repurpose images for different outputs, like print or web, as wanted. But I keep all the raws too - they are then available for re-processing, sometimes years later and long after one has migrated away from the original processing software.
Click to expand...

Thank you everyone, for your replies. Very much appreciated.

So a high res TIFF is the way to go, I think then, plus obviously now also hang onto RAW files, which is something I didn't used to do
 
IanD said:
Thank you everyone, for your replies. Very much appreciated.

So a high res TIFF is the way to go, I think then, plus obviously now also hang onto RAW files, which is something I didn't used to do
Click to expand...
A high Res Tiff is useful if you lose access to your edits, but THE most important files to save are the RAW images. Many of us may go back and re-edit our RAW files years later.

I output small low red jpg images for uploading, but not high Res files normally.
 
Lots of personal choices in how we do things - but however we choose our folder structures, tagging can be a universally effective and finer-grained help to finding things later.

Backups are another thing (to an external drive etc), but I'm not very conscientious about it - maybe I like the frisson of risk? We are mortal, after all, both individually & as a species, so I see little point in being anal about it ...
 
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droj said:
Lots of personal choices in how we do things - but however we choose our folder structures, tagging can be a universally effective and finer-grained help to finding things later.

Backups are another thing (to an external drive etc), but I'm not very conscientious about it - maybe I like the frisson of risk? We are mortal, after all, both individually & as a species, so I see little point in being anal about it ...
Click to expand...

That's my biggest bugbear. I don't have the amount of images that lots of photographers have, as I tend to go through phases, but it's the tagging and how to retrieve via tagging too, that is the biggest one.

Of course, I have loads of folders on the laptop, marked 'Cyprus July 2025', 'Ian's 50th Birthday' etc etc but how do you tag them, and would you even want or need too?
 
IanD said:
Of course, I have loads of folders on the laptop, marked 'Cyprus July 2025', 'Ian's 50th Birthday' etc etc but how do you tag them, and would you even want or need too?
Click to expand...

Assuming you are using LrC, just go through the newly imported images and tag them at the time as a group. You can retrospectively tag groups of images too.
 
I don't take loads of images myself but my process is:

Transfer RAW images from camera to temp folder on my MacBook. From there, I just delete the ones I don't want to keep. I then upload the RAW files to LR (not classic) and save a copy of the RAW on an external SSD and external HD (I have these set up to the year and then the sub folder - macro / pet / street and so on). I then edit the file and download the completed JPEG and save that to the same file as the RAW with the same name.

That's about it. I don't really post my images anywhere either, so I am still not sure why I do the above (especially the saving of JPEG) lol. Guess it is just habit and the whole process I enjoy.
 
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Card into card reader, dump images via Bridge into monthly folder. Browse through etc. Then into ACR/PS (and others depending on what it's of). Save as jpeg.
 
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I nearly always use my Sony Alpha-65 DSLR in JPEG mode; though small number of shots were made in JPEG + ARW raw too. My own way of photo management is intentionally software-neutral, so I give a lot of attention to folder trees and folder names-- needs conscious management effort, but allows me to switch between software on the whim.

As for my processing workflow used on each photograph itself however... it is very eccentric (not kidding about this); so I'm going to describe them in length here for your curiosity, but not for you to imitate this part (0) unless you have some special requirements like I do.

When I finished photographing for the day, I would...
  • Plop in the camera's SD card into my card reader, and plug the card reader onto my laptop.
    • Or sometimes I would plug the camera to my laptop through USB. (My camera is set to operate in USB-MSC mode).
  • Mount it, and open the card/camera's mount point in file manager (MATE Caja), then browse to the correct DCIM subfolder.
  • Find the start and end of each photography session by looking at files' modification timestamp.
    • If wasn't clear, use my regular desktop image viewer (Eye of MATE) to view each in doubt.
  • Create on-card subfolder for each session, start its name with ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) date (followed by dot and sequence number if there was more than one sessions in that day), followed by dot and memo label that described the session. For example: "2026-01-01.1.thonburibridge-newyear"
  • Move photographs (JPEG and ARW) into their corresponding session subfolder.
  • For miscellany photographic sessions unrelated to any of my specific photographic project, I would move that session's folder of the card into my master photography folder on my hard disk.
    • Since each session's folder inside is starting with YYYY-MM-DD date, they would automatically appear as by-session-date (+in-day sequence of session) sort order there.
  • For sessions specific to any of my projects, I move them into each project's folder on my hard disk instead.
  • Unmount the card/camera, and unplug card reader/camera from my laptop.
  • For projects with special requirement about documentation in circumstances/context, location of each photograph, technique and equipment used for taking it (1), I would create HTML README document in each of the session folder, and manually type up the details I remembered about each photograph.
  • "Cull" the unusable photographs, by going into each folder newly moved in, and use my desktop image viewer to sift through each of them, zoom, scroll, compare; and on my file manager, I would mark the blurfests/obviously-unusable/successfully-superseded ones by adding ".bak" suffix to their filenames.
  • When editing my photographs to publish...
    • I would choose the suitable photograph by using my desktop image viewer to sift through, view, compare, and select photograph from the session.
    • Once a photograph is chosen, I would open the JPEG in GNU GIMP.
    • Since I shoot with broken camera: if camera defects were visible in the photograph, I would...
      • Create a new "transparency" layer on top of it.
      • Use bush tool to paper over defects by painting onto that transparency.
      • Save only the transparency layer to PNG file named mostly the same as original photograph.
      • Close the file (discard changes), and re-open it.
    • If that photograph needed to have its level adjusted, color-corrected, rotated, cropped; do them, and also jot down all the numeric parameters of each steps.
    • But don't actually save the edit; keep GIMP open.
    • Go to my text editor (MATE Pluma) and create a command line Makefile script in that folder, which invokes command like image editor (ImageMagick Legacy) and metadata editor (ExifTool) to:
      • Open the same original JPEG file
      • Merge the retouch transparency PNG if I previously made one for that photo.
      • Apply all the editing steps I jotted from GIMP.
      • Add visible watermark/label if needed for that specific use.
      • Add web-save conversion (final resize and quality setting).
      • Add/strip metadata (like title, artist, and copyright notice).
      • Output to different final filename.
    • Save the Makefile script.
    • Start command line shell in that folder, use GNU Make to run the script to produce the final JPEG file.
    • Check the final file's appearance against the photo in unsaved edit session in GIMP
      • If matched, close GIMP and discard all changes within it.
    • Double-check the metadata in the final JPEG file using ExifTool.
    • Upload the final file to my website.
    • If that photograph was also wallpaper-worthy or print-worthy...
      • Open that very Makefile with my text editor.
      • Duplicate the lines originally used for producing the web version
      • In newly-duplicated editing instructions, change output filename, crop factor (in case of wallpaper), and final resize step (remove this stop altogether in case of print).
      • Save the Makefile script.
      • Then run the script on command line again to produce each new high-resolution final files.
  • Whenever I need to free up my disk space, I would go into each session folder (using Unix command line, sometimes semi-automatically by using GNU Find) and remove all JPEG/ARW files with ".bak" suffix at the end of their names.
My special requirement is I have to do my photographic editing in the least amount of disk space as possible; so you would see that I never saved any edit-master PNG or TIFF file. Disk space used is just for original-from-camera JPEG, 1 text Makefile, final JPEG files; totaling just few megabytes per photo. (2)

As most edits in my workflow were applied at the final export stage; I could retroactively change some editing steps for new exports of the same photo whenever I need, without affecting my ability to re-export the old version nor requiring more disk space for another edit-master. I could easily copying around the editing steps to be apply to different files as well, which is especially useful for things like channel-mixer color filters which are tricky to create.

I think people using GIMP can implement scripted-editing workflow similar to mine by using GIMP's Script-Fu ability, which uses Scheme programming language. But I don't know how that works in details yet, and I'd rather prefer something computationally-simpler and actually could re-export without graphics environment; so ImageMagick and Makefile that is.


(0) As I typed this sentence, somehow my mind just jumped to a punchline of Scottish electrician-YouTuber Clive Mitchell: "Please note: don't emulate what I'm doing; I'm an idiot."

(1) For example: on photographs used in my several-years-long ongoing Internet-exhibited streetlight photography project that I have yet to announce on this forum; I would document its location (city, district, street, block, within-block location, side of the street, direction of the camera aim), on-spot inspiration/interpretation, equipment (camera, lens, tripod), and intended exhibition title.

(2) In case the photograph was shot "just-in-case" using JPEG + ARW raw mode, that would also include another 24 MiB ARW file of course. The ARW is still not used in my workflow, as I explicitly trained myself to shoot in a way that makes photos come out decent using just on-camera process. With my newbie RawTherapee skill level, I still couldn't even develop the raw file to look that decent yet, let alone looking better than the in-camera JPEG.
 
Last edited:
xwindows said:
I nearly always use my Sony Alpha-65 DSLR in JPEG mode; though small number of shots were made in JPEG + ARW raw too. My own way of photo management is intentionally software-neutral, so I give a lot of attention to folder trees and folder names-- needs conscious management effort, but allows me to switch between software on the whim.

As for my processing workflow used on each photograph itself however... it is very eccentric (not kidding about this); so I'm going to describe them in length here for your curiosity, but not for you to imitate this part (0) unless you have some special requirements like I do.

When I finished photographing for the day, I would...
  • Plop in the camera's SD card into my card reader, and plug the card reader onto my laptop.
    • Or sometimes I would plug the camera to my laptop through USB. (My camera is set to operate in USB-MSC mode).
  • Mount it, and open the card/camera's mount point in file manager (MATE Caja), then browse to the correct DCIM subfolder.
  • Find the start and end of each photography session by looking at files' modification timestamp.
    • If wasn't clear, use my regular desktop image viewer (Eye of MATE) to view each in doubt.
  • Create on-card subfolder for each session, start its name with ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) date (followed by dot and sequence number if there was more than one sessions in that day), followed by dot and memo label that described the session. For example: "2026-01-01.1.thonburibridge-newyear"
  • Move photographs (JPEG and ARW) into their corresponding session subfolder.
  • For miscellany photographic sessions unrelated to any of my specific photographic project, I would move that session's folder of the card into my master photography folder on my hard disk.
    • Since each session's folder inside is starting with YYYY-MM-DD date, they would automatically appear as by-session-date (+in-day sequence of session) sort order there.
  • For sessions specific to any of my projects, I move them into each project's folder on my hard disk instead.
  • Unmount the card/camera, and unplug card reader/camera from my laptop.
  • For projects with special requirement about documentation in circumstances/context, location of each photograph, technique and equipment used for taking it (1), I would create HTML README document in each of the session folder, and manually type up the details I remembered about each photograph.
  • "Cull" the unusable photographs, by going into each folder newly moved in, and use my desktop image viewer to sift through each of them, zoom, scroll, compare; and on my file manager, I would mark the blurfests/obviously-unusable/successfully-superseded ones by adding ".bak" suffix to their filenames.
  • When editing my photographs to publish...
    • I would choose the suitable photograph by using my desktop image viewer to sift through, view, compare, and select photograph from the session.
    • Once a photograph is chosen, I would open the JPEG in GNU GIMP.
    • Since I shoot with broken camera: if camera defects were visible in the photograph, I would...
      • Create a new "transparency" layer on top of it.
      • Use bush tool to paper over defects by painting onto that transparency.
      • Save only the transparency layer to PNG file named mostly the same as original photograph.
      • Close the file (discard changes), and re-open it.
    • If that photograph needed to have its level adjusted, color-corrected, rotated, cropped; do them, and also jot down all the numeric parameters of each steps.
    • But don't actually save the edit; keep GIMP open.
    • Go to my text editor (MATE Pluma) and create a command line Makefile script in that folder, which invokes command like image editor (ImageMagick Legacy) and metadata editor (ExifTool) to:
      • Open the same original JPEG file
      • Merge the retouch transparency PNG if I previously made one for that photo.
      • Apply all the editing steps I jotted from GIMP.
      • Add visible watermark/label if needed for that specific use.
      • Add web-save conversion (final resize and quality setting).
      • Add/strip metadata (like title, artist, and copyright notice).
      • Output to different final filename.
    • Save the Makefile script.
    • Start command line shell in that folder, use GNU Make to run the script to produce the final JPEG file.
    • Check the final file's appearance against the photo in unsaved edit session in GIMP
      • If matched, close GIMP and discard all changes within it.
    • Double-check the metadata in the final JPEG file using ExifTool.
    • Upload the final file to my website.
    • If that photograph was also wallpaper-worthy or print-worthy...
      • Open that very Makefile with my text editor.
      • Duplicate the lines originally used for producing the web version
      • In newly-duplicated editing instructions, change output filename, crop factor (in case of wallpaper), and final resize step (remove this stop altogether in case of print).
      • Save the Makefile script.
      • Then run the script on command line again to produce each new high-resolution final files.
  • Whenever I need to free up my disk space, I would go into each session folder (using Unix command line, sometimes semi-automatically by using GNU Find) and remove all JPEG/ARW files with ".bak" suffix at the end of their names.
My special requirement is I have to do my photographic editing in the least amount of disk space as possible; so you would see that I never saved any edit-master PNG or TIFF file. Disk space used is just for original-from-camera JPEG, 1 text Makefile, final JPEG files; totaling just few megabytes per photo. (2)

As most edits in my workflow were applied at the final export stage; I could retroactively change some editing steps for new exports of the same photo whenever I need, without affecting my ability to re-export the old version nor requiring more disk space for another edit-master. I could easily copying around the editing steps to be apply to different files as well, which is especially useful for things like channel-mixer color filters which are tricky to create.

I think people using GIMP can implement scripted-editing workflow similar to mine by using GIMP's Script-Fu ability, which uses Scheme programming language. But I don't know how that works in details yet, and I'd rather prefer something computationally-simpler and actually could re-export without graphics environment; so ImageMagick and Makefile that is.


(0) As I typed this sentence, somehow my mind just jumped to a punchline of Scottish electrician-YouTuber Clive Mitchell: "Please note: don't emulate what I'm doing; I'm an idiot."

(1) For example: on photographs used in my several-years-long ongoing Internet-exhibited streetlight photography project that I have yet to announce on this forum; I would document its location (city, district, street, block, within-block location, side of the street, direction of the camera aim), on-spot inspiration/interpretation, equipment (camera, lens, tripod), and intended exhibition title.

(2) In case the photograph was shot "just-in-case" using JPEG + ARW raw mode, that would also include another 24 MiB ARW file of course. The ARW is still not used in my workflow, as I explicitly trained myself to shoot in a way that makes photos come out decent using just on-camera process. With my newbie RawTherapee skill level, I still couldn't even develop the raw file to look that decent yet, let alone looking better than the in-camera JPEG.
Click to expand...

If that was my process, I think by day 2 I would find a different hobby.......
 
I gave up very quickly reading it Lee...

My process:

Card into reader, download files using File Explorer. Files arranged by date and camera used. One folder for RAW and another for JPEG.

Process RAWS in one of two ways, either in LrC or ACR. Save processed image as Tiff and finish off in PS, save TIFF, plus JPEG in full size and small for interweb.

I use Bridge for organising, and for adding tags. NX Studio is great for reviewing images from my Nikons and my Pentax K-1 (DNG files).

RAWS ultimately stored on WD MyBooks/My Essentials. Save JPEGs on portables. I do periodically go through my HDDs, currently clearing out old TIFFS.
 
droj said:
I must be seriously lacking in curiosity, because I nodded off ... but do carry on as you are. ;-)
Click to expand...
My daughter picked up the phrase "too much information" in the 1980s and would use it to cut me off, when I started to overexplain.

Just sayin'
 
I upload Raws from card reader into an external drive
Go through them to pick favourites copy those into another folder
Convert to a Tiff with DXO photolab
Edit with Affinity photo and save as a large jpeg
I save the best Raws along with the jpegs and back them up
Only keep the best Raws delete the rest unless they are from an abroad trip
 
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