Whats your workflow?

tonester

tonester

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Name
Tony
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi folks!

I'm looking for ways to improve my workflow and curious as to what others do.

Currently using photomechanic for my agency work it's a nice plug in for PS and dead easy FTP.
Use CS6 for the the rest of my PP. I have a full time job not in photography and only work my photography business evenings and weekends so any time I can save
would be most welcomed

I

I
 
My current work flow works along these lines:

Import into Lightroom and ignore them for an arbitrary amount of time, if I know this will be more than a day I tag them all red so I can find the un dealt with stuff later. The idea of ignoring them for a while is I usually find my self to be too critical and delete good shots if I do it too soon. Time machine will back this up once an hour.

Then workflow goes along the lines of in the library module go through all shots rejecting any that are bad (oof, misfires or just plain awful) by pressing x, if it's not an x I press right to move on, don't both with picks at this point (p is the shortcut if you want to)

Once I have trimmed the chaff this gets deleted. Physically. Next I do a 2nd pass of whats left touch harsher trim out near duplicates, I don't need 5 of the same shot, 2 is more than enough ideally 1.

Then I do a final pass using stars, 5 is I want this on a wall at some point,4 is share to 500px type places ie the best of the session, 3 is stuff for Facebook and flickr type mass drop sites. 2 is it will go to develop module. Some stuff get's left unstared, but not deleted and ends up just filling disk space.

It's worth nothing nothing is 4-5 stared right away, this usually happens once I am done in develop.

I also keyword, usually after the reject process, but always before I export for sharing depending on mood and motivation. I don't often caption as I am lazy so usually leave this for 4+ star stuff only.

I've tied to use stuff like photoshop/GIMP and I find it to slow for more than 1 image and rarely do I need more then what Lightroom can do, especially now it has selective sharpening which was about all I went to the pixel editor for. I also have Capture One 6 Express but I"ve not really used it.
 
LIghtroom 4 for me.


Import everything with the appropriate keywords.

Go through each picture and set the ones I want to keep to Flagged.

I then go into develop and only view the Flagged photos.

I'll edit each one, spending 5 mins roughly in LIghtroom and export to either a Niksoft product, Photomatix or Photoshop if I need to do stuff lightroom can't.

Once i'm happy I export them all to flickr.
 
Interesting that there is only one mention of preliminary back-up so far. I assume the others are still doing it though.

For me it is a force of the automated back-up. That way I know I am safe to format and re-use my cards as soon as I put them back into the bag/camera.

Import to LR

back-up to external HDD x2

I generally flag them all for review at some point

Review all flagged images, delete the obvious duffers, rate the others using the star system

Keyword all rated images and unflag them

If there's not a scheduled back-up due before I go out or to bed I then force a back-up manually again.

All developing is done in PS pretty much and I generally work on the highest rated images first.
 
I actually use a variation of all of the above!! Im Just curious to see if there was an easy way of speeding things up for me.

Mine goes something like this:

Like maninsuitcase said I actcually ignore them for a day or so depending on the deadline! As i too find I can be too critical at first look, if its press stuff then obviously I can't.

Import to photomechanic then back up all raw files to a pre created file on my desktop.
(this will then be backed up to an external HDD)

I will have quick pass on all images and determine the ones worth keeping.

If for press they will be tagged , keyworded and description added.

I dont have a set system for this so this is probably somewhere I could actually save some time!!:thumbs:

I will then edit selected images direct from Photomechanic in PS. These will then given an image reference and go to a sub folder with the name of the job.

If required for press resized and FTP

If for private job studio etc

Final images will be watermarked and saved at low res for proofing by the client.
 
graphilly said:
Interesting that there is only one mention of preliminary back-up so far. I assume the others are still doing it though.
Click to expand...

I import to a NAS running RAID 1 (so mirrored storage), this then uploads to the cloud automatically. I don't reformat my main cards till I've processed the shots from it, and shoot two cards simultaneously, smaller CF which gets changed regularly and a 32Gb SDHC which stays in camera and only gets reformatted when it is full.

My image catalogue of processed images is held similarly, plus on my Macbook and on two external drives, one of which lives at my mum's house, one at my dad's house. Full resolution jpegs are downloadable by me from my website as a final final backup.
 
markmullen said:
I import to a NAS running RAID 1 (so mirrored storage), this then uploads to the cloud automatically. I don't reformat my main cards till I've processed the shots from it, and shoot two cards simultaneously, smaller CF which gets changed regularly and a 32Gb SDHC which stays in camera and only gets reformatted when it is full.

My image catalogue of processed images is held similarly, plus on my Macbook and on two external drives, one of which lives at my mum's house, one at my dad's house. Full resolution jpegs are downloadable by me from my website as a final final backup.
Click to expand...

Nice to see you have a system in place. So many people don't.
 
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