Workflow

Step 1: Transfer

I like to keep things really simple here. Adobe Lightroom copies the photos from my camera to my Macbook Pro. The photos are being placed in folders named after the photo’s capture date. Also during import Lightroom converts the RAW files to DNG files. There are a couple of advantages with the DNG format which I will not dig into here. I’m also applying some metadata to every photo during the import using a metadata preset. Things like copyright info, info about me, certain keywords and so on. This is a major time saver.

Step 2: Select

In this step it happens I remove about 90% of the photos. The ones that are left are the ones I want to work with in the next steps. It is in this step you can waste a lot of time and energy if you want. Don’t be satisfied with anything less than the best. I know it can be dissapointing to see a photo that seemed so good on your camera’s display actually is quite bad. Try not to waste your time on these bad photos. You can often go back an retake the photo if you want.

Step 3: Tag

First things first. Not exactly the most exciting part of post processing, but a must. Tagging your photos with keywords is essential. Not only are tagged photos much easier to find within Lightroom, once uploaded they are much easier to find for anybody including the Flickr community and search engines like Google and Yahoo. I’m also geotagging my photos in this step using HoudahGeo. HoudahGeo writes GPS coordinates to the EXIF of your DNG file. In this way I always know where I took a certain photo. Services like Flickr, Picasa, Zooomr, SmugMug and others read the GPS coordinates from EXIF during upload and automatically place your photos on a map.

Step 4: Adjust

In this step I am adjusting the photos that are left after step 2. It happens I delete another couple of images in this step. I’m mostly adjusting things like white balance, exposure, clarity, saturation, contrast and so on. Occasionally I’m taking an image to Photoshop for further editing, but I really try to keep this to a minimum.

Step 5: Distribute

Time to spread my work. I’m using Lightroom export plugins to place my photos on Flickr, Picasa and Zooomr. Backup is something that also belongs under this step. I’m using Time Machine as an onsite primary backup and Mozy as a offsite secondary backup. Of course one could argue that Flickr, Picasa and Zooomr are backups and in some way they are. Just don’t forget that during export from Lightroom your DNG files are converted to JPG. So even though Flickr, Picasa and Zooomr are a backup of your images, they are not backups of your original image files.