Help with workflow

[clv101]

After several years of pretty much only using a phone and Google Photos I'm now hopelessly disorganised with my SLR.

I'm currently shooting with the SLR, then every few days connecting it to my MacBook and Apple Photos sucks new images off the card into one multi-gigabyte Photos Library. From Photos I spin through favouriting ones I like and exporting them. I'm then importing those files into Aperture and processing, exporting a few finished files. Some of them get uploaded onto Google Photos, from where they might be posted to FaceBook, Instagram or Twitter.

It's a mess!

What software and workflow are people using for casual photography that involves basic processing (think Aperture not Photoshop), archive/catalogue, some cloud storage and social media sharing?

Cannon 7D, MBP, Android phone - don't what a subscription service like Lightroom!

 

[Coojeekitten]

Hi

My recommendation is to get the Photoshop/Lightroom suite. Yes, I know it's subscription which you specifically don't like for some reason, but the world is going the way of SAAS. The workflow in Lightroom is straight-forward & you can ease into it nicely. The non-destructive editing means that as you learn, you can go back to your original & re-edit. Not sure of the point of using Google photos & then upload them somewhere else? Remember to always shoot in RAW.

Your workflow would be:
Insert SD into computer, allow Lightroom to import
Return SD card to DSLR & reformat in camera
From Lightroom, delete any bad images
Edit images in Lightroom, using Photoshop if you need complex tools
Any images you want to use, export them to JPG from Lightroom. I have several presets for this. For instance, for regular sales, I export to full size, for social media, I have a preset which makes the JPG a certain size & adds a watermark. I probably have about 10 export presets for various things. The nice option is that you could export say, 20 full size JPGs plus 20 social media size JPGs all at the same time.

For backup, I use 2 USB drives & keep them off-site. You could also use a NAS or/& a cloud backup. The library really needs to be kept on the local disk.

 

[And]

I name all my imported folders by date.

Bridge used for catalogue/culling/labelling, CRaw for basic edits and PS for everything else.

Dated folders have subfolders for edited files saved as tiffs and completed and cropped files saved as jpegs.

Everything backed up to external HDs.

Take no prisoners when it comes to culling, quality trumps quantity.

 

[Gredawarha]

Hi

My recommendation is to get the Photoshop/Lightroom suite. Yes, I know it's subscription which you specifically don't like for some reason, but the world is going the way of SAAS. The workflow in Lightroom is straight-forward & you can ease into it nicely. The non-destructive editing means that as you learn, you can go back to your original & re-edit. Not sure of the point of using Google photos & then upload them somewhere else? Remember to always shoot in RAW.

Your workflow would be:
Insert SD into computer, allow Lightroom to import
Return SD card to DSLR & reformat in camera
From Lightroom, delete any bad images
Edit images in Lightroom, using Photoshop if you need complex tools
Any images you want to use, export them to JPG from Lightroom. I have several presets for this. For instance, for regular sales, I export to full size, for social media, I have a preset which makes the JPG a certain size & adds a watermark. I probably have about 10 export presets for various things. The nice option is that you could export say, 20 full size JPGs plus 20 social media size JPGs all at the same time.

For backup, I use 2 USB drives & keep them off-site. You could also use a NAS or/& a cloud backup. The library really needs to be kept on the local disk.

This is pretty much what I do. I know that people don't like the subscription path that Adobe have taken, but for me, it is the price of a box of beer a month. I can live with that, and whilst it is not a perfect I find it works well for me, in that I have pretty much one piece of software that allows me to manage my photo collection.

Once you also get to a sufficiently large library of photos cloud storage didn't work for me. So I have my internal drive in my PC where all my images are kept and the lightroom library file. I back this up to USB hard drive in the house and then I have third copy at my Mothers house. So short of a nuke dropping on the south east i'm pretty well secured.

Maybe look at Capture One which I have heard good things about but never used.

 

[Coojeekitten]

+1 about the cloud files, I never started using Cloud storage as there's not enough space at a reasonable cost.