Digital Workflows 1

In this article:
Digital Workflows 1

1. What is a digital workflow?
2. Ordering Images
3. Backing up Images
4. Comparing 2 digital editing workflows
5. Overview of the workflows
6. Alternative workflows

in the next article:
Digital Workflows 2: A guide to Sorting through your Images

1. Intro
2. Ways to sort through images in Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Bridge
3. What to look for whilst selecting
4. Alternative selection methods

1. What is a digital workflow?

Your workflow is the entire process from taking an image to its final presentation form. It is a repeatable pattern or system of working that is used to increase efficiency, save time, and avoid making fundamental mistakes.

Typical mistakes that come from not having a consistent workflow include sending people raw files or unedited images, or ones saved in the wrong colour space or in a completely wrong format or size, or just simply having a hard drive full of duplicate images named something like final.jpg, final.psd, final2.jpg, finalfinal.tiff and finalimagereadytopublish.jpg or myfinalimagereadyforprint.

Using a specific workflow consistently will also enable an ordered hard drive and increase your effectiveness, allowing you to spend more time on the creative side of your work. I compare it to driving or cycling- do you want to think about either of these or would you rather make them instinct and focus on where you want to go?

After reading these two articles, I highly recommend dissecting how you currently work and trying to make it more efficient. If you have mastered one workflow, develop a second one. Having several workflows is like having different tools in your toolbox, with each one being more efficient in a specific situation. One tool, does not fit all.

A standard digital workflow includes the following points:

1. Taking digital pictures
2. Copying them into an ordered system on a hard drive
3. Creating backups
4. Sorting through them to find the best images
   *Keywording and captioning where necessary
5. Editing images
6. Exporting images for purpose

Essential Tip:
Learning a few keyboard shortcuts and buying a mouse with more buttons which you can assign functions to (like the back function – control/command + z ) are two hugely important steps towards the professionalisation of your photography and will save you hours and millions of button and keyboard clicks.

Later in this article I compare two of my editing workflows, one using Lightroom and another using three different programs: Capture One, Bridge and Photoshop. Neither is better overall or worse, I use them for different things.

1. Taking Digital Pictures

This is out of the scope of this article but as an overview, things to decide beforehand in the camera are:
File format: RAW or jpg
Colour Space: Adobe RGB or sRGB
Bit depth: 8-Bit or 12/14/16-Bit Images
Image size in pixels: (here I would always go for the largest size)

2. Ordering Images on a Hard Drive

My suggestion is to save your images in folders by date with a keyword:
year-month-date-keyword so 2014-06-20-Timbuktu

Depending on which workflow you use for editing, you can create collections of images from different folders without moving the original images or having duplicate copies of them within programs such as Lightroom or Capture One. This saves a lot of space and allows you to keep one consistent system.

I do however separate my work into three rough categories which each have their folder structure by date:
1. Commercial Work
2. Family Photos
3. Personal Projects and Documentary Work

3. How should I back up Images?

KEY MESSAGE: Back up in multiple places and at multiple stages. Losing data is a nightmare we have to prevent rather than deal with when it happens.

Consider backing up raw images, smaller jpg version of the originals, and your final versions of the images.

DO NOT RELY ON ONLY ONE SYSTEM

Storage Systems

1. Bulky External Hard Drives (3-5 years)

Relatively reliable, should be accessed every year at least to refresh the data. HDs live for about 3-5 years of constant use. I think of them as lasting 2 years to be safe. If this is your principle method of storing images, buy new hard drives and copy the old hard drive onto one.

DO NOT assume that these live forever.
USE a power surge protector if you keep the drive permanently connected to your computer.

2. Portable Hard Drives (3 years)

Also relatively reliable but fragile. Expect to drop them and for them to die. The LaCie rugged HDs are the best, and worth the money and reduced storage space.

3. SD Cards (5-10 years officially, 4 years is a record)

These are not designed as long term storage spaces and are prone to getting corrupted. They are flimsy and break really easily- with the two sides coming apart relatively often.
DO NOT USE THIS AS LONG TERM STORAGE

4. CF Cards (10 years)

Whilst durable and much more solid than SD cards (have had an SUV drive over one and it still be in perfect condition), these are also not long term storage devices also prone to data corruption.
DO NOT USE THIS AS LONG TERM STORAGE

5. RAID Systems

These use a series of Internal Hard Drives and are the best but most expensive solution for storing data long term locally. The good news is they can be updated with new Internal Hard Drives rather than having to buy a whole new system. My recommendation for internal hard drives are the Seagate Iron Wolf Pro’s which are really heavy duty reliable hard disks.

6. Online Storage

Here there are many new solutions appearing every day. While these are quite reliable, they often depend on how much you can pay and of course, the speed and availability of your internet connection. Always look into what happens with your data when you stop paying for the storage.

Free versions such as Google Drive, Microsoft’s Onedrive, Dropbox, icloud are great but offer very limited space. Nonetheless, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL OF THEM!

Paid versions such as Creative Cloud, GSuite are also great if you have the cash.

Comparison of Digital Editing Workflows

Here is a brief comparison of two digital editing workflows and what they are useful for.

Overview of the workflows

Alternative workflows

There are many ways to work efficiently, these depend on what kind of work you do and how you want to work.

• News/Sports Photographers:
  Use Photo Mechanic to sort through, caption and keyword images before either sending off or importing to Lightroom or Photoshop. Photo Mechanic is a sorting and captioning program which is uses embedded jpg previews and is lightning fast (even faster than bridge at loading previews, making LR look like a dinosaur). It is useful for turning over large amounts of files in a short period of time. It can also upload images to an FTP server.
• Event Photographers where time is money:
  Using Bridge to do a first selection round before loading to Lightroom. This is faster than importing a large amount of files to Lightroom and reduces the size of the LR Catalog. If you know exactly what your client wants and are not afraid of losing a few images, this works well.
• Product Photographers:
  Using just a camera and then directly into Bridge and Photoshop. Bridge and Photoshop have batch processing tools which allow for mass editing of images saving large amounts of time.

In this article:
Digital Workflows 1

1. What is a digital workflow?
2. Ordering Images
3. Backing up Images
4. Comparing 2 digital editing workflows
5. Overview of the workflows
6. Alternative workflows

in the next article:
Digital Workflows 2: A guide to Sorting through your Images

1. Intro
2. Ways to sort through images in Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Bridge
3. What to look for whilst selecting
4. Alternative selection methods