Lets discuss: Cataloguing files from RAW to Jpegs

Razor-BladE · 19 Aug 2011 at 14:03

Oh.. looking at it again, the editing history does seem to be linked with whatever you do in 'collections'.. Very strange..
But it doesn't remove the ones that were removed in collections.

I don't think the synchronise folders thing is what I'm after.

Quick question for all of you.. when you first import the photos into LR and go through them selecting the ones that aren't usable. Do you delete them from the drive or just remove the reference in LR?

And the same question for the ones that are usable but are duplicates/have something better? Keep or chuck?

Von Luck · 19 Aug 2011 at 16:18

Razor-BladE said:
Quick question for all of you.. when you first import the photos into LR and go through them selecting the ones that aren't usable. Do you delete them from the drive or just remove the reference in LR?

And the same question for the ones that are usable but are duplicates/have something better? Keep or chuck?

Delete them from the drive (both unusable and usable duplicates), why waste the disk space if you'll never use them?

Razor-BladE · 19 Aug 2011 at 16:34

Since I've been using LR, I've just been removing them.. not sure why.
For the dups/similar, I was thinking just in case I might use them.. but in reality I guess I won't.. time to get deleting then!

D.P. · 19 Aug 2011 at 16:53

Razor-BladE said:
Quick question for all of you.. when you first import the photos into LR and go through them selecting the ones that aren't usable. Do you delete them from the drive or just remove the reference in LR?

And the same question for the ones that are usable but are duplicates/have something better? Keep or chuck?

The ones that aren't usable are deleted.
The ones where there are slightly better version are sometimes deleted depending on the quality of the photo (e.g., a slightly inferiour version to a 5* photo is still going to be better than 95% of all my other photos, as an aside I have maybe 1 or 2 5* photos). There is always some sujectivity so some people might prefer a slightly different composition. More over, there is commerical interest and copyright reasons for sellign unique photos. If you have several that are slightly different then each one can be reused.

This also depends on your shooting style. If you machine gun away and hope to get a few good shots then it will be worth deleting lots. I take time and think a lot about compositions and subjects, checking exposure on a histogram, checking focus on screen. I delete test photos and obviosu failures as I go. While some people might shoot 1000 photos I might shoot 20-50. But this also depends on subject, e.g. when shooting wildlife you never know what will happen next and what opertunities might arise so I might shoot 100 photos in 20 minutes of a moose and select 2. However, In general my keepers to rejection ratio is high. But what I keep may not be what I find commerically viable or portfolio material . I started shooting on film so this may be a factor.

Diskspace is cheap so if you have a high kepper ratio then there is no need to delete.

Razor-BladE · 19 Aug 2011 at 22:12

Wow.. that took a while.

Completely reorganised it. Nice and neat now.

e.g.

.. 2010
.. 2011
..... 01.17 - Birthday1
..... 01.31 - Birthday2
........ Processed
........ Web
........ img0.cr2
........ img1.cr2, etc

Having the RAW files not in a separate subfolder means I can just choose the 'Same as original file' + 'Put in subfolder' when exporting in LR.

Cleared out a lot of photos that I won't use aswell.. deleted 50GB+ of RAWs.

Jimmy1983 · 27 Aug 2011 at 22:15

Currently shooting in RAW and .jepg iam now thinking about just shooting in RAW. To save space and will save me time as I wont have to sort thru RAW and .jepg. Will just export a jepg from a RAW file if needed. Seem a good idea?

sbi5ar · 27 Aug 2011 at 22:28

Jimmy1983 said:
Currently shooting in RAW and .jepg iam now thinking about just shooting in RAW. To save space and will save me time as I wont have to sort thru RAW and .jepg. Will just export a jepg from a RAW file if needed. Seem a good idea?

This is what I have just started doing... no need to have a jpg as well, lightroom can sort that out for me

My main problem was deciding between CR2 and DNG!!! (settled with DNG in the end which I hope was the right decision).

Jimmy1983 · 27 Aug 2011 at 22:40

sbi5ar said:
This is what I have just started doing... no need to have a jpg as well, lightroom can sort that out for me

My main problem was deciding between CR2 and DNG!!! (settled with DNG in the end which I hope was the right decision).

Any reason why? Iam just going to keep mine as CR2

sbi5ar · 28 Aug 2011 at 10:07

Jimmy1983 said:
Any reason why?

The pathway to choosing DNG over CR2 is very painful

as I couldn't find a definitive source which gave the benefits and cons and had to read blog after blog and page after page to try and compile a list.

My main reasoning was that you don't have to worry about XMP sidecar files took me a while to find out what this is and how they worked as all the data is stored within the DNG file itself. That along with the DNG format will be around for longer than CR2/NEF (not a big deal as they won't fade away quickly).