Slipperman
Senior Member
just curious about the pp methods you guys and gals use and how you keep track of/save the different settings used in tools like NIK Viveza, Topaz Adjust, etc.
i actually like the base Nikon tools. i have my PC setup to automatically start Nikon Transfer when i plug in my SDHC card. from there i uncheck all the files, delete any files i don't want then select the remaining files to transfer over to my NAS raid storage device (giving me an automatic backup of the drive). on completion, Transfer starts up ViewNX-i which displays the newly created directory of NEF files. in View you can setup links to any third party editing tool (Photoshop and On1 for me) that automatically reads the files selected in View. i just like the ease of use of both tools and the fact that View can be used not only as a bridge to the more advanced tools but to zoom in and check sharpness. for me it works.
once i start editing though that's where things get a little hacky. if anybody has checked out my Flickr page, you might notice that the images have rather long and cryptic file names to them.
as a bit of background, before i transfer, i set the destination directory to say '2017_07_14 Church_' and the individual files to 'Church_{Transfer assigned number}'.
as far as the rest of the file name, this is how i come up with it. first if im bracketing/HDR'ing, i edit all selected raw files in camera raw then save all resulting files to jpg's. then i use one of my HDR tools to combine the jpg's into a single file and save that as a tif. at this point the file name would be something like 'Church_001_002_{HDR (NIK) or PHX (Photomatix)}_{hdr effect name (default, balanced, soft, etc)}.tif'. from there on, i work with the tif. if i add a Viveza effect, i'll append 'viv' to the file name. if i add a Color Efex preset, i'll add 'cep_{preset name/abbrev}' and so on and so on. same goes for editing single files except there's only a single number and no HDR or PHX. this does help greatly in helping me track down where the original file is located on my NAS but i figure there's got to be a better way. especially since i don't have a way (that i know of) to access the individual slider values i selected in the preset(s) i used.
so i was wondering, how to other people on here go about a. organizing/naming their files and b. keeping track of the slider values for each preset used. appreciate any input.
as an aside, i'd prefer not to use Lightroom. thx..
i actually like the base Nikon tools. i have my PC setup to automatically start Nikon Transfer when i plug in my SDHC card. from there i uncheck all the files, delete any files i don't want then select the remaining files to transfer over to my NAS raid storage device (giving me an automatic backup of the drive). on completion, Transfer starts up ViewNX-i which displays the newly created directory of NEF files. in View you can setup links to any third party editing tool (Photoshop and On1 for me) that automatically reads the files selected in View. i just like the ease of use of both tools and the fact that View can be used not only as a bridge to the more advanced tools but to zoom in and check sharpness. for me it works.
once i start editing though that's where things get a little hacky. if anybody has checked out my Flickr page, you might notice that the images have rather long and cryptic file names to them.
as a bit of background, before i transfer, i set the destination directory to say '2017_07_14 Church_' and the individual files to 'Church_{Transfer assigned number}'.
as far as the rest of the file name, this is how i come up with it. first if im bracketing/HDR'ing, i edit all selected raw files in camera raw then save all resulting files to jpg's. then i use one of my HDR tools to combine the jpg's into a single file and save that as a tif. at this point the file name would be something like 'Church_001_002_{HDR (NIK) or PHX (Photomatix)}_{hdr effect name (default, balanced, soft, etc)}.tif'. from there on, i work with the tif. if i add a Viveza effect, i'll append 'viv' to the file name. if i add a Color Efex preset, i'll add 'cep_{preset name/abbrev}' and so on and so on. same goes for editing single files except there's only a single number and no HDR or PHX. this does help greatly in helping me track down where the original file is located on my NAS but i figure there's got to be a better way. especially since i don't have a way (that i know of) to access the individual slider values i selected in the preset(s) i used.
so i was wondering, how to other people on here go about a. organizing/naming their files and b. keeping track of the slider values for each preset used. appreciate any input.
as an aside, i'd prefer not to use Lightroom. thx..
