Whats your photograohy workflow?

DoubleCheese · 5 Jan 2010 at 19:16

Trying to be more efficient with my photos this year and just thtought I'd see what others are doing.
At the moment I'm importing the photos via a card reader into Lightroom. I'm "trying" to use an external HDD (Firewire 800) for all my photos and Lightroom Catalogue and these are backed up to an internal SATA drive. The theory behind this is that I can then take my drive and use it on my laptop. In practice the Importing part is taking an age! I'm not sure why.
The photos are then catalogued and edited in Lightroom.

What you all doing and any ideas why a fast external drive would be so slow doing this?

rpstewart · 5 Jan 2010 at 20:33

DoubleCheese said:
In practice the Importing part is taking an age! I'm not sure why.

Are you just importing or importing and rendering previews at the same time? Having the images and the catalogue on the same drive will slow things down (although I'm not sure by how much) since the drive heads have to jump between reading the source image and updating the catalogue.

ScarySquirrel · 5 Jan 2010 at 20:52

- Uploading to computer via USB cable (yes, it takes ****ing ages)
- Import into Lightroom
- Go through photos and select 'picks'
- Filter 'picks'
- Go through again and 'unpick' ones that on 2nd look don't make the cut
- Process final picks in Lightroom
- Export to Photoshop for final processing, sharpening, noise reduction
- Save
- Upload to Flickr

My process is a little conveluted, my catalogue is messy, but hey ho!

olv · 5 Jan 2010 at 21:16

- Create a new folder under Photos / YYYY / YYYY-MM-DD - Subject
- Copy files from memory card into new folder
- Browse photos with Adobe Bridge
- Edit any shots I like in Photoshop
- Save full size processed jpegs in 'Processed' subfolder
- Resize and Save for web
- Upload

Raymond Lin · 5 Jan 2010 at 21:21

Mine are all straight from the camera.

What's a work flow? :confused:

sorn21 · 5 Jan 2010 at 21:24

- Import via SD slot
- Flag preferred ones
- Edit in iPhoto, or Photoshop if need be.
- Upload to Flickr

Done!

Adrianr · 5 Jan 2010 at 21:31

Depends if I've shot tethered straight into C1 or shot onto CF and uploaded later. All photos go into a dated folder copied over 3 hardrives (Well technically 4, but 2 are RAID, one is external).

Browse and tag photos in C1 and develop chosen shots into Adobe RGB 16bit TIFFs. C1 automatically puts these into the 'Output' folder.

Within the Output folder are 'Working' and 'Final' folders. Working for PSDs in progress and Final for flattened output TIFFs. Within the Final folder will likely also be a Web JPEG folder.

It sounds like many folders within folders within folders, but it keeps everything regimented and seperate. I know exactly where a given file in a project *should* be, providing I've followed my own rules.

I do desperately need to sort some sort of Drobo/NAS set-up for file storage though. I've not been using this sytem for the entire time I've been shooting digitally, so everything is still an absolute mess. Getting a new setup might kick me up the rear end for a long overdue spring clean.