{"id":3096,"date":"2017-03-21T21:19:49","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T04:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/?p=3096"},"modified":"2017-03-21T21:19:49","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T04:19:49","slug":"my-workflow-and-how-i-organize-my-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/my-workflow-and-how-i-organize-my-images\/","title":{"rendered":"My workflow, and how I organize my images"},"content":{"rendered":"

Post processing is a necessary step in creating a great photo. Back in the day, I had binders full of negatives, slides, and proof prints and I\u00a0would spend hours in the darkroom burning, dodging and manipulating prints. Today, I use Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop{{1}} to organize and to make my images come alive.<\/p>\n

In this post, I will describe\u00a0my typical workflow and how I organize my images. I have written (and will no doubt write more) posts on various retouching<\/a> processes.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Import images to Lightroom… I also add keywords associated with location, or anything else all the images from the shoot have in common. I have a preset that renames my raw files with the date, and then imports them into a year\/month\/day folder hierarchy{{2}}.<\/li>\n
  2. Delete any obvious screw ups.<\/li>\n
  3. Quick rating. I do a quick run through of the photos, ranking from 1 to 5 stars. One star means it is not a good photo, but I want to keep it for some reason, maybe an image I just want to keep for reference purposes. 3 stars is decent and I may want to come back to work on the image. 5 stars is an awesome portfolio quality image.<\/li>\n
  4. next I\u00a0review and mark any not worth keeping as a discard (x), and possibly mark others with one of several custom colour labels{{3}} such as “Model Release”, “Do Not Publish” or “To Work On”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now the images are catalogued and rated. I may leave the files alone and come back to them later, or, if an image or two are inspiring, I will start tweaking them right away.<\/p>\n

    I usually do white balance, and maybe exposure compensation in Lightroom. I could do it in Photoshop, but I would have to transfer as a smart object, and I find that is more trouble than it is worth. I may do some other global adjustments in contrast, etc before opening the file in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

    If you right click on an image and select “Open in Photoshop” this will create a PSD copy with all the cataloguing of the original raw file. All changes made in Photoshop will be reflected on this copy. At this point, I will drop the original raw file to 2 stars, as the Photoshop file is the main version of this image, and I don’t want the unedited raw file to show up in searches or smart catalogues.<\/p>\n

    At the end of the day, I will have all my raw files with some keywording and a ranking. Some of them will have duplicate Photoshop files with the same keywording. I can also drag images to different catalogues, but that is another article.<\/p>\n

    [[1]]There are other programs and workflows that may work as well or better for some people, however I have been using Photoshop for a long time and it is what I am comfortable with…[[1]]<\/p>\n

    [[2]]I also have a top level folder for “jobs”, i.e. commercial work, that is subdivided into year\/month\/day folders. I use keywords to describe the job and client.[[2]]<\/p>\n

    [[3]]You can set custom label text for your colour labels to make it easier to categorize images. Some people use keywords instead, but I find this can mess up searching. For example, if you search for “publish” you will also get all the files keywords “Do not publish”.[[3]]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Post processing is a necessary step in creating a great photo. Back in the day, I had binders full of negatives, slides, and proof prints and I\u00a0would spend hours in the darkroom burning, dodging and manipulating prints. Today, I use Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop{{1}} to organize and to make my images come alive. In this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,15],"tags":[34,57,32,55,59],"class_list":["post-3096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easy","category-computers","category-lessons","tag-lessons","tag-lightroom","tag-tips-techniques-and-thoughts-on-photography","tag-photoshop","tag-retouching","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanklughammer.com\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}