Workflow question

[larmende]

Hi,

I am wondering which programs people use t on a Mac to work with their digital cameras. For example, I just took 400 pictures at an sports event and was looking to get them down to under 200 for Facebook. In this occasions I shoot in jpeg rather than raw.

On my PC this all seemed quite easy.
* copy all pictures from the camera onto the hard disc
* in Windows Explorer open the 1st picture in the folder in Windows photo gallery.
* At that point I could just go through all of them in screen size, click from image to image, delete directly with one click if wanted, or open in any program (I usually used Microsoft Office Picture manager) to crop and enhance.

This way I went really quickly through hundreds of pictures, getting them down to the keepers, ready to upload.

* in a next step I used XnView to resize all the pictures to a maximum hight and width (mostly 1024) for uploading.
*and then manually imported them from FB using their import tool.



Just now I tried to do that with my new Mac. What I liked is that I could just plug in the card into the computer, made it lots faster than USB. I tried to use iPhoto directly, but when browsing through the pictures I didn't find an easy way to delete the unwanted pictures. Also, iPhoto immediately tried to load all 400 pics onto my phone.
Stopping photo stream I then went back into finder. From there I slowly managed to cut out the pictures I didn't want to use, but I had to drag them into the bin rather than just pressing or clicking a button. I also didn't find a way to go through them in full screen size only in the preview and I could manually look at pics in larger sizes.
Once I cut down to 150 pictures I then imported them into iPhoto and in there I cropped and enhanced the pictures.
What I missed was adoption to resize them, preferably in bulk.
What I really liked was the button to push the whole album into Facebook, however, at 5.6MB a picture it took quite some while.

So I guess I must be missing a few tricks. Have you guys an optimised work flow for that, or is there a program I miss?

 

[flosseR]

dunno about iphoto. I use Aperture and i use the 9 key to reject photos instantly. import is fast, and then i can directly from Aperture upload to Facebook (if i choose to) or anywhere else.


but even your windows approach is rather.....lengthy...

 

[Keleko]

iPhoto doesn't have the "9" key, but you can rate them and hide photos you don't want to see.

Command-0 through Command-5 will rate 0-5 stars. Command-H will hide (seems to be similar to the reject from Aperture), or leave it at 0 stars. Command-delete will send a photo to the trash if you really want to just delete it. iPhoto can upload to Facebook directly, so you don't have to go with the manual import from Facebook.

iTunes does automatically assume you want all photos copied to your phone, so you do have to go set it to import just the ones you want.

iPhoto lacks a bulk edit to a group of pictures. This is a more advanced feature that is found in Aperture.

 

[flosseR]

iPhoto doesn't have the "9" key, but you can rate them and hide photos you don't want to see.

Command-0 through Command-5 will rate 0-5 stars. Command-H will hide (seems to be similar to the reject from Aperture), or leave it at 0 stars. Command-delete will send a photo to the trash if you really want to just delete it. iPhoto can upload to Facebook directly, so you don't have to go with the manual import from Facebook.

iTunes does automatically assume you want all photos copied to your phone, so you do have to go set it to import just the ones you want.

iPhoto lacks a bulk edit to a group of pictures. This is a more advanced feature that is found in Aperture.

Thanks Keleko..Now, I know this too (Not that i used iPhoto, but my sister in law does )

 

[snberk103]

My workflow.

1) Plug memory card into reader. LR opens and asks to import.
2) Depending on the number of events on the card I will either import the whole card or just a selection. Add keywords as appropriate. LR will import into its default YYYY-MM-DD folder structure. If I'm importing only a selection (say, Grad then Beach then Party) I keyword each selection. Perhaps other metadata, maybe.

[I believe iPhoto lets you keyword on import as well. Instead of a YYYY-MM-DD folder structure it uses 'events', which is pretty similar. At this point you can now find your images by either date, or by event name, or by whatever keywords you have added.]

3) Sorting: I'm trialling two methods to do a quick sort. One may not be appropriate for iPhoto. The method that will be appropriate is the star method. You simply scan through each image, quickly, and decide if you are going to delete the image or not. If you aren't going to delete it you assign a single star. Even fantastic shots get a single star at this point. The idea is to simply cull the duds quickly. Once you have made this initial sort you simply do a search on "zero stars" and delete the bunch.

[In LR you can't delete images from the disk from a "Smart Collection", but you may be able to delete from the disk from a "Smart Album" in iPhoto. If so, set one up. Then you don't even have to search for them.... just open the Smart Album.]

Sorting - Alternate. Flagging the images as you scan them for the initial sort. Flagged images get deleted. Do a search after the scan for flagged images, and do a batch delete. This preserves all the stars, including no-star, for ranking within the potential keepers, instead of assigning the 1st star for all keepers.

[In LR, there are 3 flagged states. Flagged, not-flagged, flagged-for-deletion. I've only just started using the flagging method for my 1st sort to see if it's better than no-star / one -star. I don't believe iPhoto has this option however.]

4) Exporting. Way easier in LR (and I believe Aperture) because you can create any number of pre-sets that will export to a particular size, format, etc., add watermarks, etc. I used EasyBatchPhoto when I was using iPhoto. With EBP you simply exported full-sized images to a folder, and then used EBP's presets to batch change the images to the size, etc you wanted. An extra step, but it was not too onerous.

As you've discovered, publishing to FB is now a one button operation, so that's a bonus.

Hope this rather long dissertation helps....

 

[larmende]

Hi, a very belated Thank You for your tips everybody.
I did another photo shoot yesterday and then invested £55 into Aperture. That was a bliss.