Getting organised....

[Georg Baumann]

Time to tackle the mess.... I suppose I am not alone in that respect, well, I would hope so So this thread is all about getting organised with your files.

There is a lot involved when you have to deal from square one with data coming from a variety of cameras spanning over five years, and this is exactly where I am at.

My plan is something like this:

Main Programs I will use are:

- Capture One
- Lightroom
- Photoshop

Then there are a great many different little helpers such as Helicon Focus, Photomatix etc.

My goal is to create a working structure that I stick with and that gives me the best possible future security.

Where I feel a bit stressed is the thing about Capture one, Lightroom and Photoshop Integration. I know that I need to add Metadata on Import, which makes this easy for the future, but I am struggling with the structure of C1 and Lightroom and then Photoshop.

Naming conventions are a matter of taste I guess, apart from basic rules that should not be broken, such as do not use space bar in your file name, and use lower case all the way, for example.

Backup proceedures are also down to individual hardware solutions and flavours, but the basic structure ain't that easy to commit to considering x-cameras and at the moment three different programs in place, and who knows it might be five or more, well hopefully not.

My current (only 4 hours old) conclusion is that I would be probably best advised to first do a search over my system for all photo files, regardless what camera was used, and whack them all into one folder. From there, because I chose Lightroom, create a new catalog which will contain everything, and start import procedures. Having said that, I am aware that I need to commit to a location/harddrive where the pictures will reside in the first place, and then stick to that. Later changes, are best to be performed from within lightroom.

It is easy to start from scratch, but organising existing data into a new, still to be developed workflow, does cause me personally some headaches.

I know, this is boring the daylight out of most people and I am certainly one of them, but I am at a point where my pictures become my assets, and I need to take that as serious as can be, to avoid a Super Gau in the future

This is probably sounding pretty confused, and well, it reflects where I am at. Any opinions and insights from you folks are greatly appreciated.

 

[Robert Campbell]

I was in the same position some time ago. I organised the pix into files by date or subject, imported into Lightroom, and added keywords. Boring ++, but you can't escape it.
By all means use C1 or whatever to process files, but then keep them in a LR catalogue, so you can find them again.
There are also programs that will search your drives for duplicates -- I found I had lots, but only after I'd imported them --you can either delete them, or move to different folders.
Keep the pix on a dedicated drive; and get an automatic/semi-automatic back-up program to back up to a second drive.

Peter Krogh's book -- The DAM book -- is very comprehensive, but was overkill for me.

 

[Jonathon Delacour]

My current (only 4 hours old) conclusion is that I would be probably best advised to first do a search over my system for all photo files, regardless what camera was used, and whack them all into one folder. From there, because I chose Lightroom, create a new catalog which will contain everything, and start import procedures. Having said that, I am aware that I need to commit to a location/harddrive where the pictures will reside in the first place, and then stick to that. Later changes, are best to be performed from within lightroom.

Georg, I've recently settled on a similar workflow:

* Photo Mechanic (rating and keywording)
* Lightroom (asset management, creating slideshows, etc)
* Raw Developer (instead of Capture One) to create 16-bit PSDs
* Photoshop (for final tweaking with Nik plugins and output to flat 16-bit TIF files for printing)

My suggestion would be that, rather than "whacking them all into one folder", you use something like Bridge or Photo Mechanic to rate, keyword, then cull the images so that you're left with just the pictures that are worth further attention (and, perhaps, printing). The "rejects" can be archived to another hard drive and/or DVD, just in case you need to retrieve something at a later date.

I copy the "selects" from Photo Mechanic into a "transit" folder and use Lightroom's watched folder facility, which automatically moves the selected images into their final location on the hard drive. The real advantage of this is that you don't have to manually import anything. As soon as a batch of selected images arrives in the watched transit folder, Lightroom simultaneously moves them into my "selects" folder and adds them to the "selects" catalog, with all the metadata intact.

I guess this is classic Peter Krogh-style DAM, which may be overkill for Robert but proved to be a sanity-saver for me.

 

[Jack]

I have my own historical method of storing files by date and job and was using it long before LR's library management came along, so I never adopted that feature in LR. Now enter C1, and its session import and job code integrated perfectly with my existing methodology. So now for me it is:

1) C1 create job folder, and import-from-card or directly-shoot-to a session folder or folders as required

2) Global edits inside C1

2a) Rank and sort inside C1 as needed by number ranking, color flag or both

3) Local edits in CS4, saving edited version back to C1 session output folder

4) A few 3rd party programs are used: Helicon Focus, AutoPano Pro, DFine, Color FX Pro and Silver FX.

* So for me personally, I have zero need for LR.

 

[Georg Baumann]

Thanks for sharing gentlemen, i get back to that a little later ....

 

[Georg Baumann]

It is really confusing to me. But I need to get my head around it and concentrate for a few days on nothing but that.

My plan to use LR is becuase of it's abilities in keywording and more, something I believe C1 does not offer in terms of asset management.

I am somewhat forced to C1 because of the alpha900 and phase one that I can use for the moment.

I did not upgrade to CS4 but use CS3, mainly for denoise, sharpening plugins, and eventually some layer work.

All these output and input folders and different versions of files are creating a mess here and I lost track because I did not apply a systematic approach to start with. :ROTFL: I should really say, I am creating that mess!

So it is down to zero, and I suppose best thing to do is to plan that on paper probably and then tackle one after the other problems I face in implementing it. Here is to hoping that I need to do that only once, and then religiously stick to a system. My excuse is good, until a few days ago, I did not have a propper working system, but this was replaced now and all excuses are gone with the old mac.

 

[Don Libby]

My primary tools are C1 and CS4 (I'm also now using Helicon Focus thanks to Jack). I use Bridge to keyword and rank and my own idea of keeping track of images both archival raw none processed and processed.

I've used LR a couple times and frankly can't get my hands around it. I guess there's options that are nice to have but I just don't feel they're necessary to my workflow.

Don

 

[Georg Baumann]

I think I am a small step closer now.... I can not have Capture one deal with the naming convention I want to apply.

Basically I plan this here (I got this from Seth Resnicks structure and I like it.) :

yyyymmdd_original file name_custom text_ 4 digit sequence

So, I was thinking, as I am dealing with files from five cameras, it appears to be efficient to have a single C1 output folder on my RAW drive, say C1 Export TIFF and there subfolder for each camera. Now this would be my oroginal files folder. Having said that, hmmm, I already converted them to TIFF here, and I wonder, would it be wise to keep the orginal RAW files or is that overkill?

From there I need to learn how that works with a watched folder, and organise in LR. Sigh....

As for ranking, that is another fish to fry.... I wonder whether I should do a basic ranking already in C1, and get rid of files I do not want to keep, and then do the final ranking in LR.

 

[Don Libby]

I've got my files organized my year then month then camera. I'll occasionally add place.

E:/RAW
E:/RAW/2009/June/06-06/Cambo
E:/RAW/2009/June/06-06/1Ds 111

or

E:/RAW/2009/Sedona/1Ds III/06-14
E:/RAW/2009/Sedona/Cambo/06-14, etc

My archival is somewhat similar

My processed images are saved by location first then after test printing onto my "Main Print Catalog" which is backed up on several duplicate drives.

This system has worked well for me for several years. Then again I shoot mostly landscape. Any commercial work I do is save by client.

All files are key worded and metadata saved while in bridge.

Don

 

[Dale Allyn]

Well, I guess I'll throw out my process, just to be sociable. I would not call my process polished or well organized by many standards, but it works for me.

First I'll say that I do not shoot events, so tools found in Aperture and LR are of little interest to me. I just don't go nuts with keywords and such. I do some, but I can find anything in my hard drives by my folder layout so it just feels like extra work (the keywording).

My raw files are downloaded off the CF cards and placed into a folder for that particular outing or studio product shoot. I use Macs, so this is done at the Finder level, not via import by C1 or Bridge. I don't like any other software to touch my files until I have them in place on my hard drive and the backup drive. I copy the CF to two drives for this.

The folder is named "20090629_Yosemite" as a means for ordering them and letting me know what's inside. These folders order very nicely by name in chronological order in my "Pictures" folder. I may have only the RAWs in that folder, or there may be more folders with separation such as "A", "B", etc. or maybe "day 1", "day 2", etc. nested inside as needed. If it's an extended outing I might break the outer folder into different dates, but this would normally only be for trips longer than three days. Also, if the outing had very different subject matter, like a half day of photographing a nearby town, I'd likely give that a separate folder (if there is some meaningful need for that separation).

If they are Phase files I open the RAWs in C1 and set a couple of basic items that I always do to every file (ICC profile, copyright notice, etc.) to all. If they're Canon files I do this step in Bridge simply because I'm not using C1 for non-Phase files yet).

Then I simply create an output folder inside of the above folder called something like "Yosemite Output" and use that for any RAW conversions or psd files, etc. Inside the "Yosemite Output" folder I may have other folders such as one for low resolution files, one for finalized print files, etc. I'm now saving all of my PS files as .psd again because of C1's style of naming their files as .tif to avoid confusion.

I make note cards of a number of my images (though not so much anymore), so those output files go to a dedicated "NoteCards" folder in my "Pictures" folder with reference to the originals in the name of each and on the metadata. These are all final output files and are separated this way for easy access for frequent printing. This could be done by aliasing also, but I don't bother with that. The note cards are further separated by "landscape", "Thailand", "wildflowers", "wildlife", etc.

Using the above convention allows me to navigate to files very easily by simply scanning via the Finder or using Spotlight. I typically open my Pictures folder in list view, scroll down to the year, see the folders from June, and open the one from the area I want. It does however require a little use of human memory, but I find that more efficient than trying to remember which keyword I might have applied.

Note to add: I do not use the Mac OS "Pictures" folder which is part of the default user account. My image files are on a dedicated drive (mirrored to another and redundantly periodically cloned to a third), so the Pictures folder in the account section of the Finder windows is the one I set up for archiving.

And for my images which I deem "keepers" – those which make it to print and web – are given more detailed meta data with additional copyright info, contact info, web url, etc. I tend to do this in PS (a template in File Info), and I may add some notes to remind me about print settings and such as well.

I admire those who have a super organized workflow with the patience to apply useful meta data, etc. right from the beginning. But I find that I rarely have the patience to organize my files like a CPA (certified public accountant) before I dive in and start to process my RAWs.

Edit: hahaha, I blathered on so long in my post that George and Don have moved on. George, I'm using Seth's naming scheme as well (at least partially), as I describe above.

 

[Don Libby]

Dale - I'd be the first to admit to having an anal approach to securing my files...

My biggest fear is screwing up somehow and losing the file. That actually happened on the Alaska trip last year. I had worked this image up and somehow forgot to save it as a Tiff only saving as a small Jpeg that I posted here.

I like knowing I have the original untouched RAW image (I do add metadata and keywords) to fall back on.

I always carry at least 2 external drives with me and transfer the files at the end of each day. I'm luck that I have a kick a$$ laptop that allows me to see what I captured at the end of the day and know for sure I got it right. It's a simple matter for me to keyword and add to the metadata at the same time I'm viewing the days catch.

Bottom line you have to do whatever works best for you otherwise you just won't do it.

Don

 

[Dale Allyn]

That's right, Don. One has to find what works for they're style and mentality.

As for protecting the originals: I'm a bit nutty. I try to keep the CFs with the originals until I get home. They're cheaper now, so that's easier than before. I also copy to hard drives on the road. When I get home I move them to my main Mac and archive them. I also burn a DVD of the RAWs if it was particularly successful outing. If I format the CF cards during the outing I will have made at least two copies and maybe a DVD.

It's not that I consider my stuff so important, but just that I like to be the one to decide when and if to delete. Rather than a hardware glitch or a dullard moment of quitting without saving, etc.

 

[Don Libby]

Very similar thoughts.

This is also a major factor in my decision to upgrade my laptop this year. I spent a week in the California Redwoods getting great images everyday. I was occasionally using stacked focus only to find out my laptop didn't have enough horsepower to perform the work (and it was already max out on RAM). I didn't find out till I got home that I could have done a couple just a little bit better. Had I known at the time I could have easily returned the next day to re-shoot.

Sorry for going off topic

Don

 

[Georg Baumann]

Very interesting, yeah, loosing files... nightmare!

Now that it is getting serious for me I can not even think about that without shivers down my spine. :ROTFL:

I bought a 2 TB external RAID-1 which I will use for secondary backups, and I thought it to be a good idea to keep one identical drive out of the house in the fireproof safe of my solicitor, may be rotating them every two weeks.

Hehehe, I just remember when my parents wanted me to start collecting stamps and gave me a book full of it, just hopeless, I could not give a damn about these paper snippets, and organising them neatly around in folders and stuff. LOLOL Here I am 40 years later facing the same organisation stuff again, only now I care about the snippets.

 

[Georg Baumann]

Now I am completly warped, the session stuff in C1 is confusing the Heck out of me.

Ok there is the Folder called "Capture One Library" and so far I added everything to that folder. Now I read that about sessions and I am not sure whether I undersand that.

At the moment I am having chaos. But what I intended to do is to create subfolders in the C1L "Capture One Library" Folder by camera used.

But the whole session thing has me confused now. Do you create a new session for each shooting or what is that really about?

I thought if I have something like:

/volumes/raw/c1l/phaseone45+
/volumes/raw/c1l/alpha900

etc.

And import pictures, regardless from card or harddrive, I could simply import them by date into the relevant subfolder.

What am I missing about sessions?

Sorry, but this is really confusing to me.

 

[Jack]

Georg:

You really need to get over the pond for a C1 lesson

 

[Georg Baumann]

<....head resting on printout of c1 manual....:sleep006:....dreaming.... chasing Jack around the house shouting... It's all your fault %^&@!^$%!, stand still now and get some!>
:ROTFL:

I am just too new in that whicked program with the tiny arrows and hidden menus.

I wanted to crop something and used the crop tool, dragged around the area I wanted and clicked right :wtf:... nothing, pressed enter and another picture pops up... :cussing:
:ROTFL:

Ok, I shut up now, I am going to study that manual tomorrow and see how far I get.

 

[Georg Baumann]

dammit.... already 2:30 am.... again... :bugeyes:

While I find this session stuff not very intuitive, I LOVE the Color editor, this is very slick and fun to punch selectively colors. If only the graphics could refresh smoother and quicker.

 

[Don Libby]

Oh Georg I feel your pain ...

:ROTFL::ROTFL::ROTFL:

Get some rest all will be better soon

 

[Don Libby]

Georg

Check with Doug at Capture Integration as they offer on line course(s) for C1. Or attend Jack and Guy's next workshop and kill two birds at once

Just an early morning thought...

Don