Speedy Workflow Tips

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.photographyblog.com/articles/how_to_achieve_a_speedy_workflow/' target='_blank'>http://www.photographyblog.com/arti...peedy_workflow/</a><br /><br /></div><p><p><em>"I often envy photographers who shoot for fun and don&rsquo;t have the pressure of clients waiting for their images. Not only can they take as much time as they like to review and process their images, but they can also play with the latest Photoshop actions and generally experiment with postproduction techniques. Unfortunately, that&rsquo;s not so viable if you&rsquo;re running a photography business where time is money. I</em><em>n my day-to-day life as a wedding photographer, it&rsquo;s vital for me to stay on top of things so I don&rsquo;t get left behind with a backlog of post-production work. Over the years, I&rsquo;ve developed an efficient workflow that helps me to process my images quickly, while keep the quality level high."</em></p><p>PhotographyBLOG has an article on how to get an efficient workflow up and running. While I am perfectly happy with my current workflow for now, I also am a much lower volume shooter than most. I think most people in their second or third year of shooting will likely find themselves starting to get overwhelmed by how to store, keep, and process their photos. Not helping is the fact that most of the good tools are not cheap. Lightroom is about $300, and there are few competitors to it. I've learnt that some of my friends just dump everything into the "My Pictures" folder, and use the built-in Windows Picture Viewer to sort things out... not the best way to do things!</p></p>

[Reid Kistler]

Article has some nice tips - passed it along to youngest daughter (entering her senior year at college as a Photography Major). Although she uses CS4, she does not currently own Lightroom - wonder if that app is as attractively priced at the bookstore as CS4 was... :)

Have also saved the link for later reference: my own collection of digital photos is getting rather unwieldy (alas, have several different attempts at "organization" represented in the file system! :( ), and One Of These Days I fully intend to reconcile them....

[ptyork]

she does not currently own Lightroom - wonder if that app is as attractively priced at the bookstore as CS4 was... :)

$90 for Lightroom Student/Teacher
$180 for Photoshop CS5
$360 for CS5 Production or Design Premium

Pretty incredible pricing. One of the few nice perks of being a teacher. :)

As for the tips, I gotta say that I disagree with the convoluted folder structuring. Personally, I just have two folders under my user folder: "RAW Photos" and "Photos". Photos is basically just a published version of my RAW Photos, or rather the published Lightroom library. I keep the folder structure under both of these one level deep: "YYYY-MM-DD, Description". If photos span multiple days, they get an XX in place of the actual days.

Lightroom (and every other decent photo management tool) offers keywords and virtual collections (i.e., albums) to manage the more granular distinctions among photos. AND you can apply multiple keywords to a photo or include that photo in multiple collections. You have a lot of flexibility to slice and dice. There is really no reason to use a complex file system folder model that locks you into only one hierarchical structure. 'Course, I'm far from professional, so perhaps I'm overlooking something in this...

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

ptyork, I actually keep my stuff in the same way, but 2 levels deep. First level is the year, then the second is as yours - date then description.