Thoughts on new workflow strategy

Why are you making your life so hard? I would use Aperture or Lightroom to manage RAW files. It is not only safer than managing files manually, it also saves space (by working off versions) and you'll also be able to do a lot of edits within Aperture/Lightroom. E. g. adjust the white balance of 20 pictures at once. This gives photos a more consistent look with less work. No manual conversion (= work) is necessary, this is all done in the background for you. tiff files are generated when necessary.

If you use Aperture, you can easily sync photos from within iTunes. If you use Lightroom, I think, it's still possible to do that quite easily (I think you can add the photos you want on your iPhone to an album which then exports photos to a folder; iTunes then syncs this folder with your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch).

 

You haven't mentioned Lightroom in your first post, so I assumed you weren't using it. If you are already using Lightroom, your proposed workflow seems even more bizarre to me: there is no need to export anything for storage or for editing.

I'm a little confused: what exactly do you want to achieve here? Why are you trying to go out of your way to do stuff by hand that Lightroom was designed to take care of automatically?

 

Why convert the raw files to DNG? If you're applying presets to get to the .TIFF, then there's no real reason I can see to go to DNG. Also, do you plan to save multiple JPEGs (Web, wet print, inkjet) or not?

Otherwise, it seems pretty reasonable to me- though I keep my raw files and TIFFs in the same directories, which makes it simpler to locate everything. I'm not all that concerned about JPEGs, other than images for sale, which all go into collections to upload online- as I can always resave from the TIFF.

Paul

 

I still don't understand the benefits of your proposed system.

If you are wanting a better method to find/sort your "keepers" from the "pretty goods", sounds like you just need to learn to better utilize LR's rating, color labeling, or keywording system.

The rest just seems like a very convoluted solution to some file OCD. In doing so, you are abandoning the RAW-centric, non-destructive workflow philosophy and opening yourself up to mistakes and more work. Not to mention an incredible increase in filespace usage (both DNG and TIFF of every file?)

Ruahrc

 

Creating a bunch of tiffs (especially if they are 16 bit) will waste far more space than the savings that you get when you convert your RAWs to DNGs.

Again, I still don't understand the benefit or motivation behind this: the master should be the RAW file and never ever a rendered tiff. The tiff file is a version of the RAW file, a rendered version of the master, namely the RAW. That's the whole point of an Aperture/Lightroom-centric workflow. Besides, if these tiffs are 8 bit files, the situation is even worse since you're losing information and you're working on a `master' that has substantially less data than the real master. And if they are 16 bit, you get pretty huge files.

You should use ratings to mark your best shots. You can then view photos whose rating is better than a certain preset. That allows you to drill down to the picks within a fraction of a second instead of doing all this file/folder gymnastics. I get more and more the impression that you don't really use Lightroom as it was intended to.

 

yep I'm another one for the Dont get it camp on your work flow

Just use aperture or lightroom, if your worried about losing versions, just back up regually and maybe have an off site back up too?

for me I

1) Import photo's to Aperture (still kind of playing with LR at the mo)
2) Back up to Network drive
3) Once I know I have 2 copies I can format the card
4) Use Aperture to do basic editing, for more serious editing photoshop
5) If I have heavily edited the Photo In PS I'll save a seperate copy of that and re-import to Aperuture, usally in a sub folder of the photo set.
6) I will usaully rank the photo's and have a smart folder of the better pictures.

Thats it.

If I am going to print or export I'll export in jpeg straight from aperture.

Backup wise:

I'll Have copy on mac
One copy on my Nas
One copy on my Time Machine drive
Off site back up every 2 months or so (yes i mabe could do with doing this weekly!)