Workflow

First pardon me, if this has already been asked, but I didn’t find much with me searching.

I am looking for a general idea on how to handle the photos once I have taken them (a camera to storage idea). Currently once the photos have been taken, I transfer them (via copying in Windows) to my laptop drive. From there I create a folder for the different types. The folder name is the “Year subject” (2015 JH Football vs town name). I leave all the photo names the original. If I decide that I want to edit some, then I create a subfolder called “edits” and copy the ones in that I will edit. This is so I have the original and the edited one. After sometime passes I move these folders off my laptop to an external drive.

A little about my shooting. I am mainly a hobbyist and do not do any paid work or any work for anyone else. It is mostly family. My gear is this:

Laptop
External drive
Adobe Photoshop Elements
I just keep thinking that there is a better way than I am doing it now. But maybe not. I would like to hear some areas for improvements and/or suggestions.

Everybody is going to have a different method of organizing ..

for me I do basically like you.

Everything straight from the camera goes to a folder called 'originals' (all 40,000 of them) where they are batch filed by date first then basic description (2015-06-21 CAMPOUT) Then if I make alterations to a photograph I create sub-folders named depending on what I did (CROPPED, ART, B/W, etc.)

The photographs in the sub-folders that I feel are of special note get transferred to another drive and sorted into another series of folder by usage (ART > B/W > BUILDINGS, etc) or occasion (EX-WIFE'S FUNERAL, COMPETITIONS 2014, etc)

Under no circumstances do I delete any of the originals (unless they are hopelessly buggered up) and any changes are always placed in a separate folder. Took me a while to learn my lessons the hard way. lol

I am trying to work out a better workflow too !!

At the moment this is how I do it ...

I have a Surface Pro and I have not found a single USB hub that works well with my surface and my USB 3 Hard Drive so I do this :

SD Card reader plugged in, drag/drop photos onto desktop>
Plug in HDD, Copy photos onto their for permanent storage>
Unplug HDD and go into Lightroom and import all photos from Desktop, look through them and rate them and do my editing>
Export Jpegs - copy them to the external HDD
Open Amazon Photos and upload all RAW + Jpegs into the cloud>
Remove Photos from Desktop

Well as has already been pointed out, everyone has to find a flow that works for them but here's mine in the proverbial "nutshell"...

• Pull card from camera and review my shots using Adobe Bridge.
• Shots either get 5 Stars or they get nothing (five versus, say, one, because I touch-type and the 5-key is an easier "reach" than the 1-key).
• Shots are then filtered and shots without Stars are deleted. There may be a secondary culling of the surviving photos but that depends on the shoot itself, my mood, phase of the moon, whether there's an "R" in the month, etc.

• Surviving shots are imported/renamed with a subject, date (month and year) and some meta-data via Bridge, into a folder with a matching name and date (Bridge makes all of this a breeze).

And that's pretty much the drill. I will admit I am ruthless when it comes to culling.

I will admit I am ruthless when it comes to culling.

Click to expand...

Paul does sound ruthless! LOL

But I've found out that today's junk may become tomorrow's treasure. Recently I entered a competition where one of the categories was 'Abstract' ... Oh great! But to make a long story short: I don't do abstract! LOL While digging through my photographs I came across one I took on the Great Barrier Reef. It was generally out of focus, with rotation from wave action, and should have been trashed years ago when I first took it. But with a little "post" work (okay: a lot) I was able to turn it into an entry. (I still hate it lol)

Tomorrows treasure:

lorenbrothers said:

But I've found out that today's junk may become tomorrow's treasure.

Click to expand...

I lived by that credo for a long time myself... I just don't any more. Just one of those things, I reckon.
...

Cool, so I am not really that far off. I know that we all handle things differently and that is why I asked. I was looking for some other ideas. Does any rename each file? If so, how to you rename hundreds of them quickly? Is there an utility that can do that?

Jeff_J said:

Cool, so I am not really that far off. I know that we all handle things differently and that is why I asked. I was looking for some other ideas. Does any rename each file? If so, how to you rename hundreds of them quickly? Is there an utility that can do that?

Click to expand...

Lots of applications can do batch renaming.

I use Adobe Bridge which has a lot of options for numbering, and renaming batches of files but if you're using Windows you can use Ctrl+A (Select All), right-click on ONE photo and "Rename" it: e.g. DSC_0539 to "Trip to Disneyland - March 2015" and subsequent files in that selection will be renamed and sequentially numbered: Trip to Disneyland - March 2015 (2), Trip to Disneyland - March 2015 (3), Trip to Disneyland - March 2015 (4), etc. I'm sure Mac users can do the same thing, I just don't know how because I don't use a Mac.
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Thanks Paul. I am using a Windows laptop, so that works great.

I download the images from the camera using USB cable to my Desktop. The images are arranged date wise on a separate HDD the File tree is
. HDD
. Images
. D3300
. RAW
. YYYY - Year
. YYYY-MM - Year and Month
. YYYY-MM-DD - Year, month Date

I also archive them on a separate HDD on the workstation and to two USB3 external disks

After processing the RAW images, I export them to jpeg (normally 1000 pixels on the long edge) and file them subject wise, say
. JPG2015
. Flowers
. Hibiscus
. Red

That way I can trace what I want and if required access the relevant image and reprocess it if required - Larger Size, optimised for printing etc.