this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Photography

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How can I improve my photo organization? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago by hoyapolyneura@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro
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I do photography as a side job. 100% self taught, and I think my lack of education when it comes to photo organization is going to catch up to me.

My current process is:

  • Back up photos on hard drive

  • Cull photos on my Mac by “tagging” them, and moving the tagged photos to Lightroom

  • Move them to the appropriate file in Lightroom. Photos are organized by subject > year > name/date. This also serves as a backup.

  • When I send photos to clients, I copy the photos to a floating file on my desktop and share them on a Google drive file. I do this because it (was) free and easy, except now I’m paying 9.99 a month for for more storage

This doesn’t seem like an ideal process to me. I don’t know what I don’t even know. Does anyone have a streamlined process they want to brag about?

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[–] ivantsupka@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I have more streamlined organisation of images

Usually I shoot more than thousand RAW images per shooting

I import everything to Lightroom Classic with automatic creation of smart previews. Cull images using keyboard shortcuts, delete bad images (blinking eyes, misfiring flash etc). Tagging the best with stars, make color correction and some editing if needed. If I need deeper editing, I open images in Photoshop directly from LR to keep everything in LR library. Than I exporting best images and send to client.

Sometimes I add photos to collections and sync smart previews to cloud, so I can cull and edit images on the go

After editing is done, I store images on external 2,5" hard drives, keepeng smart previews in LR library. I move images and folder in LR, not in finder. So I have entire library of images catalogized in LR and I can edit low rez smart previews without even connecting external drives.

And everything is baked up via backblaze

[–] kissel_@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don’t get why you’re culling images before taking them to Lightroom. Lightroom is FOR culling images. I use star ratings. But plenty of people just reject images with a pass/fail mentality. Either way, a tool like Lightroom (or capture one) is meant to take you through your whole workflow. Images can come off the card into the app, get sorted, get adjusted, and exported all within the app. Exporting out to a folder shared in google drive is fine, but you might also consider a web-based gallery option like smug if or Zenfolio for image delivery depending on your client base.

[–] hoyapolyneura@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I don’t get why you’re culling images before taking them to Lightroom

Honestly, me either. I guess I never considered culling them their, but the star rating seems way more streamlined

[–] ejp1082@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not sure I even follow your process. But -

  1. I use Lightroom for everything. Stick the card in the computer. Import with Lightroom. It'll copy the photos to the right folders, organized by date.
  2. Backups run automatically either on a schedule (for my local backup) or when they detect changes on the drive (for my cloud backup - Backblaze).
  3. Go through the photos, flag the ones I want to work on
  4. Work on the photos
  5. Give the photos I've worked on a star rating once I'm done and add to relevant collections (For a project, a trip, strictly personal photo, shareable photos, etc)
  6. Add keywords to all the photos I've given a rating to - genre, subject, location, people in the photo, etc.

On an organizational level that's pretty much it. In Lightroom I can then search and sort by date, metadata, keywords, etc as desired.

I export to JPG as needed and in my case share with dropbox, though google drive would work just as well.