I appear to be filling up my hard drive on my computer recently and having heard about people's workflows am looking for a better process.
Currently it is: Shoot in RAW, Download and Rename in Photoshop storing on hard drive still in RAW, back up renamed files on DVD still in RAW (NEF).
Plan: Shoot, Copy all RAW file to DVD, Delete non keepers, Save others as TIFF in Photoshop...
Do you use cataloguing programmes of should I just use "My Pictures"?
I'm a Lightroom convert - and now i've learned to utilise it fully i wouldn't swap off it.
My current set up is Mac with 1Tb H/D with another 1Tb EHD connected for Time Machine back up giving me 2 copies of each picture i download. I have a 3rd 1Tb EHD which is connected only when downloading pictures of the cameras memory card.
Pictures imported through Lightroom and backed up to second EHD and the first EHD making an automatic copy of any activity on the Mac.
Sort out pictures and delete the no go's in Lightroom. This will also delete them on the first EHD being used by Time Machine leaving a full copy of everything downloaded on the 2nd EHD.
Process pictures according to which is easiest to process (no editing just export as a jpg and utilise or upload first - last being those that require plenty of work to achieve the look i want).
Once processed (including key wording) they are then moved to the relevant folder and left in their RAW processed state. Because Lightroom works in a loss less format this is fine for me - and when i need a copy for something i just export it as a jpg or TIFF according to its requirement (print, web or e-mail).
The only 'processed' images that are not in RAW format in Lightroom are those that are web usable jpgs of only a few hundred k a piece. 200 images equals 500k - hardly gonna hurt my 1Tb H/D.
My experiences with LR have not been as rosey. >:( But then I don't have 3 tb of storage.
I found the LR catalogue and backups choked my two 500gb drives within a matter of a couple of weeks. Not only are the LR catalogues huge, but storing files as tiffs also takes up an enormous amount of space. And importing pictures I found to be frustratingly slow.
There is a new version of Bibble out ($199, so I can't afford it alas) which has library functions.
I ran the trial and found it much better than LR, especially the tabbed editing sections and speed.
I just use Picasa to sort and tag pictures, editing them as and when with an external editor. It is also non destructive in that it always makes a copy of any original file before saving an edited version. Disadvantage is that Picasa does not store an offline database, so if a drive is removed all the library data is erased. But it is free.
Pictures are loaded onto the PC by Flashpipe.
Automatic backup is done daily by Syncback onto my ehd.
I personally don't like the sound of only backing up to DVD as these would need regular recopying and don' hold that much.
I guess what you do depends on your budget in the end. ;)
Quote from: Tringle WP on January 07, 2010, 02:06:56 PMI guess what you do depends on your budget in the end. ;)
Budget is very very
small
ok, budget s small - but how small is small?
What is the size of the biggest images you produce? And what do you do with your pictures?
My kit was bought especially to accommodate my work flow system and free up my time s i can spend more time taking pictures than downloading them and processing them!
Maybe you have not really asked the right question! I get the impression what you are really thinking is "how can i improve my work flow and back up for the smallest outlay?"
To answer that question we would need to know what you currently have, what available your budget is and what you want to do with your pictures...
do you want to keep everything you take or just the good stuff? Do you want to keep the original files and the processed ones or just the finished processed images?
Another vote for Lightroom. Now on version 2.6, and with most of the bugs from earlier versions sorted out, I find it an indispensable tool in my workflow and will never go back to using Bridge. It's plenty fast enough for me on a Windows XP SP3 machine, Intel Core2 Duo, 3.00GHz, 4GB RAM of which 2.75GB is usable) and serves all my needs as a DAM (Digital Asset Management Tool) as well as a RAW converter. I have 2 catalogues - one private, one commissioned work - and quickly looking at the latter it contains 3813 images resulting in a catalogue size of 86.4MB, a Previews folder of 2.50GB and a Cache folder of 2.31GB which I do not find excessive at all.
This latter catalogue contains mostly RAW images with a small percentage of TIFFs. I've found that as Lightroom has improved my need to take images into Photoshop for further editing has been much reduced resulting in a need for round-tripping to Photoshop and the generation of TIFF files. Due to the fact that edits appertaining to RAW files are stored in the catalogue file I find no reason to save additional files within Lightroom e.g. any files that are to be sent to an online printer/gallery are exported as JPEGs to a temporary file on the desktop and from there sent online prior to being deleted. Any further call on a RAW file and the process is repeated.
The Lightroom catalogue file (the most important of all as the Preview/Cache files are rebuilt automatically if needed) is backed up to an EHD along with the image files themselves (a separate process) using SyncBack - a free utility. This EHD is then further backed up to a second EHD - once again using SyncBack. I don't use or place any reliance whatsoever on DVD backups because at least with an EHD you soon become aware of when/if it fails whereas with a DVD it's only when you come to need it that you'll discover whether or not it's good or not.
Reasonably sized EHD's a quite cheap nowadays gigabyte for gigabyte when comparted to DVD's and certainly represent good value for money when comparted to the loss of your images. Backup and backup again. :tup:
Quote from: picsfor on January 07, 2010, 03:37:43 PM
To answer that question we would need to know what you currently have, what available your budget is and what you want to do with your pictures...
do you want to keep everything you take or just the good stuff? Do you want to keep the original files and the processed ones or just the finished processed images?
Nikon D40 camera used on NEF 6.0mpix, software I have Elements 5 and I keep every pic unless really shocking... What I think I want to do is keep all pictures taken in back up and keep files of the good ones to show in an easily accessible manner..
In truth I know I need an EHD... I'm just not sure I'm storing them effectively for the computer I guess and don't want to continue doing that is there is a better way.
Budget currently £100....
Slightly off track here - a query for you LR wizards (I'm guessing that with it's enormous cost LR is not on magic's list) - does LR only store tags in a sidecar file? When I did the trial tags entered in Picasa appeared in LR no problem but tags added in LR only appeared in LR itself.
Forseti, I'm guessing you must have changed a default setting for LR catalogues - during my trial using only about 2000 images my backup drive got over 100gb of LR rubbish written to it in less than three weeks.
Only asking out of curiosity really as unless a rich relative I don't know about dies and leaves me everything I won't ever own LR.
For information I have a quad core vista machine. LR runs OK, but like treacle compared to Bibble.
Quote from: magicrhodes on January 07, 2010, 04:19:36 PM
Quote from: picsfor on January 07, 2010, 03:37:43 PM
To answer that question we would need to know what you currently have, what available your budget is and what you want to do with your pictures...
do you want to keep everything you take or just the good stuff? Do you want to keep the original files and the processed ones or just the finished processed images?
Nikon D40 camera used on NEF 6.0mpix, software I have Elements 5 and I keep every pic unless really shocking... What I think I want to do is keep all pictures taken in back up and keep files of the good ones to show in an easily accessible manner..
In truth I know I need an EHD... I'm just not sure I'm storing them effectively for the computer I guess and don't want to continue doing that is there is a better way.
Budget currently £100....
Sounds like the new ehd will take up the bulk of that then.
I've asked the birthday fairy for Bibble, but it's not my birthday for ages.
£100 um!! Ok, my initial thoughts:-
1. Do not under any circumstances use the backup facility from within Elements to backup your images. If memory serves me correct, and it's been a while now since I used that application, the backup it creates gives meaningless file names to your images e.g. B000001 etc which makes finding any particular file outside of Elements a nightmare. The backup from within Elements has been designed more with restoring from within the application in mind which is not always what you want to achieve or do.
2. And although this means starting from scratch which may not be desireable but would be effective, is to get all your images off the computer and onto an EHD. This will not only free up your computer but with the application (Elements) on one drive - your computers Drive C, with the images being on another external drive will speed things up considerably because the application is not having to go back and forth across one drive.
3. As a secondary backup drive you could also use an USB stick - probably more reliable than an EHD as it has no moving parts. You should be able to pick up a reasonably sized EHD and say 8GB USB stick from within your budget if you shop around.
4. Backup the one EHD to the USB stick using SyncBack.
5. Save up for another EHD because one things for sure, over time your image collection is going to keep on growing.
Quote from: Tringle WP on January 07, 2010, 04:25:56 PM
Forseti, I'm guessing you must have changed a default setting for LR catalogues - during my trial using only about 2000 images my backup drive got over 100gb of LR rubbish written to it in less than three weeks.
No not at all really. However, what I do periodically is 'optimise' the catalogue (found in catalogue settings) and in Preferences have set to delete full-sized previews after one day. If I view any particular image from say a week ago at full size the preview will of course be rebuilt so to speak as and when needed. For you to have had such a large catalogue it would be my guess that you left this setting on 'never to delete previews'. Only a guess of course but I can't think of any other reason for you having had such a large catalogue file(s) with such a relatively low image count.
Quote from: magicrhodes on January 07, 2010, 04:19:36 PM
Quote from: picsfor on January 07, 2010, 03:37:43 PM
To answer that question we would need to know what you currently have, what available your budget is and what you want to do with your pictures...
do you want to keep everything you take or just the good stuff? Do you want to keep the original files and the processed ones or just the finished processed images?
Nikon D40 camera used on NEF 6.0mpix, software I have Elements 5 and I keep every pic unless really shocking... What I think I want to do is keep all pictures taken in back up and keep files of the good ones to show in an easily accessible manner..
In truth I know I need an EHD... I'm just not sure I'm storing them effectively for the computer I guess and don't want to continue doing that is there is a better way.
Budget currently £100....
Have a look at this thread: http://cameracraniums.com/forum/index.php?topic=1078.0 1TB disk for £70. If you are keeping the Raw files then delete the Tiff and/or convert to high quality Jpeg, as it takes up less room on your hard disk. If you have a spare slot for another hard disk in your computer, and can fit yourself, then get on as they are cheaper than a external one. ;D
Quote from: magicrhodes on January 07, 2010, 04:19:36 PM
Budget currently £100....
OK - go to www.scan.co.uk and look at external hard drives - you can get a 500GB EHD for £46 - so with £100 you will have budget for 2 of them which more than covers the back up area.
The trick then is synching them - but that's not really difficult because if i remember the Nikon Software it allows you to specify where to download your files to - so you could down load to the 2 drives one after another. It won't take that long with a Nikon D40 - and it matters not whether you shoot in RAW, jpg or TIFF - the process would work for any file format.
So, having downloaded the files you then use one of the drives as a working drive (you could name it Photos and the other Photos Back UP) and take the pictures off that to work with - and as you finish processing an image you can save it as a jpg of either low-medium quality 72 dpi for web or screen use or high quality 300dpi for printing purposes and again save to both EH D's
Quote from: Tringle WP on January 07, 2010, 04:25:56 PM
Forseti, I'm guessing you must have changed a default setting for LR catalogues - during my trial using only about 2000 images my backup drive got over 100GB of LR rubbish written to it in less than three weeks.
.
How much? 100GB? Have to go with Forseti on this one - you must have had it configured to keep everything. I'm like Forseti - very small file sizes for catalogues and previews. 3.86GB for catalogues, back up catalogues and previews of some 8000 images plus any side car files recording what processing i have done with key wording.
The thing with Lightroom - you have to take learn how to use it to really make use of it. My first go at learning ended in disaster and i went back to using Bridge. When i got the Mac - it was the only software i had to do most of things i wanted with my images - so i had no choice but to learn it. This time round i sat down, read the good book and played with it a bit on sample images etc and then cracked it. It's been a year now and i have finally refined my use of it to improve my work flow. I just don't have a need for Photoshop any more - i can do so much of what i want in Lightroom that any odd bits that do need Photoshop can be ignored. Creating panoramas was the last 4 things i used Photoshop for - and you can get software for less that does just as good a job, if not better.
Andrew, I didn't change any of the defaults in LR except the one about minimal previews in the import files dialogue. Anyway, as I said moot point from this punter as I'll never be able to afford it.
I agree about not using the organiser in Elements, especially not for backing up - it's a absolute dog of a module.
Sorry wan't trying to impy that you were the cause of the issues as such - i was trying to work out what could have caused your lightroom trial to occupy soooo much of your hard drive.
Forseti's comment seemed the only one that made sense, and if it can run amock with your system that way, well it could run amock with my system in a similar fashion, and i'm only just starting to scan in bucket loads of images which will saved as tiif files, and i can't afford for Lightroom to go mad on hd space like that, because the tiff files will be much bigger than the raw files from my camera.
I didn't think you were making that implication Andrew.
No, I'm going to save up for Bibble. I'll buy the lite version when it comes out and eek out the pennies for an upgrade in due course.
Meanwhile, I assume Magic has been shopping for a suitable ehd?
How do I find out how much space L/Room is occupying on my hard disc? :-[
Assuming you're on Windows, Lightroom normally creates a folder in your My Documents folder or the My Pictures folder within the My Documents folder.
If you go to that folder and open it, i think at the bottom of the window is some info telling you about the folder contents - how many files and combined size of files.
It is this figure that tells you how much Lightroom is taking up on your hard drive.
Also, i think if you right click on the Lightroom folder and select About it tells you the same info.
I've had another thought on Tringles issue - and that would be the option of importing pictures into Lightroom.
I only let Lightroom add them to the catalogue from their default location.
So basically, all files are downloaded to a folder called "To Process" and added to the Lightroom Catalogue whilst leaving the files in the folder and mapping their current location.
When i delete or move a file in Lightroom, it also gets the OS (Windows or Mac) to action similar moves on the hard drive - so pictures are either deleted or moved from one folder to another on behalf of Lightroom and its catalogue information is updated to reflect the new location of the file or the fact that it has been deleted.
Lightroom 2, i think, by default imports the pictures into the catalogue and its folder - thereby having a duplicate copy of the picture on the hard drive. Were i to allow it to do this - then Lightroom would currently take up some 70-80gb of hard drive space, and when i initially started, some 170-200gb of hard dive space. And that would be on top of the hard drive space taken by the original copies of the pictures.
Yes- that would have been a real drain on the system and i think i would have uninstalled it as well.
Is this a bargain?
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=323559
Or they have a Seagate 500GB for £49.99, would two of these be better than one of the above... (I am aware one of the above is more for less but 2 spreads the risk.) ??? ??? ???
Quote from: magicrhodes on January 08, 2010, 09:18:37 AM
Is this a bargain?
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?moduleno=323559
Or they have a Seagate 500GB for £49.99, would two of these be better than one of the above... (I am aware one of the above is more for less but 2 spreads the risk.) ??? ??? ???
It's a very good price for a external drive, and that company are well known for their floppy disks of 1.4mb. :tup:
i personally would recommend you get the 2 x seagate 500gb drives.
As said, i'm now running a 5D MkII and i'm a year or two away from filling up my 1Tb hard drives - and my files comprise RAW images at between 20-29mb per image. Your D40 is not gonna come anywhere close to that!
So, the 2 Seagate 500gb drives will give you pretty solid redundancy for now, and a few years to save up for fresh ones once they fill up (in a few years 2Tb will be the same price as 500gb is today).
Also, by having the 2 drives - you can empty your computers hard drive of all the images (except for when you import them) which will give it more h/d space to work with and maybe work a bit faster.
Finally - and this is the crucial bit - the second ehd can be left switched off except for when you transfer files to it, thereby making it nigh impossible for it to be caught be any viruses or trojans etc that like to destroy images for fun!
the 1.5Tb is a great price - but i can't find a use for it at this time and would be buying just for the sake of it. For the semi pros and pros it would be a good purchase but for the rest of us...
Okay so that is storeage sorted...
Organisation and viewing... am I best off simply down loading into a file e.g. External DriveA>2010>Spanish Holiday
or importing to Elements 5
Quote from: magicrhodes on January 08, 2010, 09:51:26 AM
Okay so that is storeage sorted...
Organisation and viewing... am I best off simply down loading into a file e.g. External DriveA>2010>Spanish Holiday
or importing to Elements 5
Personally I use Picasa as my image DRM. It's fast, auto scans for changes, keeps backups of original files, and has some very effective one click corrections. But above all it's free. :D
Andrew, I did notice the LR default and changed it to leave the files where they are. I think it was the LR catalogue backups that took up all the space - when I came to remove it there were literally hundreds upon hundreds of LR catalogue folders and subdirectories.
Quote from: Tringle WP on January 08, 2010, 10:29:27 AM
Personally I use Picasa as my image DRM. It's fast, auto scans for changes, keeps backups of original files, and has some very effective one click corrections. But above all it's free. :D
Free?! Whats the catch?
Haven't found one of any consequence yet. But because it is from Google you don't get to upload directly to flickr, you'll need the flickr standalone uploader for that. And you don't get to create image stacks - sounds bad but it is so fast and easy to use you'll wonder why you ever did such a thing (assuming you did).
It's just what I've grown used to I suppose.
You can directly open files in Elements; always save the Elements edit with a different name (or create a duplicate to edit) to avoid mucking up the source file.
It's horses for courses, you have to decide what works best for you personally.
There is no catch. It's a very good program and it really is free :tup:
Many on here use it - i think Clacton Dave ;D is another fan as are a few others.
For work flow - i would download your pictures to your hard drive a and hard drive b (assuming you're going with the 2 hard drive option)
Then open files from hard drive a to process - saving processed pictures as jpg to your computer hard drive (my pictures) if you want the convenience - or just straight back to hard drives a and b.
My pictures are all stored in 1 of 2 main folder.
They are downloaded into a folder called "To Process" - and that's where they stay until i have had a chance to view them and delete them or process them.
Once they have been processed - they then get moved to a folder called "Processed" which is further sub divided by subject as a simple back up in case key words get lost along the way.
Those sub folders can be further sub divided so for example my folder structure goes Processed - which contains several subject based folders of which one is UK Locations which is further sub divided by County.
So a directory structure would be Processed/UK Locations/Sussex/Brighton - i have added a further sub division for Sussex because this is where i live and take most of my pictures. Suffolk is also the same because that is where i come from - but all other counties including London only have the County sub folder.
Hope that gives some idea on how to file your images - and Picassa really is not bad, and would have used it myself had i not got Lightroom - though i also have the Canon software which is actually preferred by some pros to Adobe offerings.
As for Tringles issue with Lightroom - you clearly weren't meant to get on with it. Hope you can get your copy of Bibble soon - it has some rally nice features and were i not deep into Lightroom would probably choose it as a second choice
Quote from: picsfor on January 08, 2010, 08:46:45 AM
I've had another thought on Tringles issue - and that would be the option of importing pictures into Lightroom.
I only let Lightroom add them to the catalogue from their default location.
So basically, all files are downloaded to a folder called "To Process" and added to the Lightroom Catalogue whilst leaving the files in the folder and mapping their current location.
When i delete or move a file in Lightroom, it also gets the OS (Windows or Mac) to action similar moves on the hard drive - so pictures are either deleted or moved from one folder to another on behalf of Lightroom and its catalogue information is updated to reflect the new location of the file or the fact that it has been deleted.
Lightroom 2, i think, by default imports the pictures into the catalogue and its folder - thereby having a duplicate copy of the picture on the hard drive. Were i to allow it to do this - then Lightroom would currently take up some 70-80gb of hard drive space, and when i initially started, some 170-200gb of hard dive space. And that would be on top of the hard drive space taken by the original copies of the pictures.
Yes- that would have been a real drain on the system and i think i would have uninstalled it as well.
Andrew - as you're probably as experienced with Lightroom as I am (if not more so), then this has been badly explained or, more than likely, not being interpreted correctly by me. Lightroom as you correctly state 'maps' where on the hard drive(s) your images are - it doesn't Import them. By default, on first installation Lightroom links to the 'My Pictures' folder (Windows) because that where it thinks most users will have their images. However, this is easily changed and the user can locate their images on any drive/folder they wish to - even multiple drives. It's simply a case of telling Lightroom 'where' the images are to be found. Even if the user chooses the Import option to copy the images from a CF card the images will be copied to a location/folder of choice. Either way, only one copy of the images appears - leaving aside the option to create a backup of course and this is a seperate issue. This is the point that I am having difficulty in understanding in your post when you state 'imports the pictures into the catalogue and it's folder thereby having a duplicate on the hard drive.
All that aside, there can only ever be a 'fixed' size in terms of Gb/Mb in respect to your collection of images/catalogue. For example, and using very very simple numbers here - you have a folder on Drive X containing 100 images and is 100Mb in size. Lightroom creates a catalogue to 'map' these files and let's say this is 10Mb in size. Add a cache folder and preview folder of 10Mb each and you are now looking at a total of 130Mb. Yes I know these figures don't equate to reality but have been kept to units of 10 for simplicities sake. Now if you think about it, it doesn't matter if you start juggling these various folders about placing them on different drives and the like, the fact remains that you still end up with 130Mb of data.
As concerns the possibility of Tringles catalogue file being unreasonably large then I believe that in part this is as a result of possibly incorrect terminology being used. With the number of images stated it is impossible to have a Lightroom catalogue file (lrcat) of that size. I think what was possibly meant was the Lightroom 'folder' containing not only the lrcat file but also the cache file and Preview files. Even then it would be difficult to explain this 100Gb folder size unles of course he was also choosing the Lightroom folder to save his catalogue backups - not a very wise thing to do for obvious reasons.
I realise of course that for Tringle non of this is of any importance anymore having chosen to give up on it, but for other casual readers perhaps an understanding of how Lightroom works might go some way to avoiding disappointment with the application at a later date.
your grammar is better than mine :(
As an Englishman - you would think i would have a better command of my own langauge than some one living i Germany! :-X :-\
@ Magic - here's my setup. Yes it appertains to Lightroom but it gives you some background info as to how I have my PC/Laptops set up in terms of folder structure and backup methods.
1. The PC has a RAID (mirrored) drive C (2 x 250GB) which has nothing but applications located on it. This mirrored setup (not employed by many I admit) means that I always have a copy of my main drive (C) in the event of one of the drives failing. I perish the thought of having to reinstall all my applications from scratch including application updates etc etc.
2. A second drive - Drive D ( 250GB) contains all my data files etc, in fact most things bar applications and images but including the Lightroom catalogue file (lrcat).
3. EHD - Drive K (1TB) contains ALL my image files. Lightroom installs by default the lrcat file to Drive C along with the application itself but this I copied and pasted onto Drive D followed by deleting the original in it's default location. Lightroom, as well as most applications, runs quicker and more efficiently when it is not having to jump backwards and forwards on the same drive in trying to run both the application as well as find the associated data.
Along with having a backup of the Lightroom catalogue file (.lrcat) on this drive I have one parent folder called unimaginatively, Parent Image Folder - more on this in a moment. Within this parent folder are sub folders and sub sub-folders e.g. Parent Image Folder > sub folder > Germany > sub sub folder > Black Forest > sub sub folder Munich etc etc. Sub folder > Italy > sub sub-folder > Toskana > sub sub-folder > Umbrian etc. - you get the drift?
4. Second EHD - Drive J (2TB) is an exact copy of the first EHD (Drive K) and these 2 drives are synced using the freeware application called SyncBack.
ABERS. How do I find out how much space L/Room is occupying on my hard disc?
Navigate to the .lrcat file and hover your mouse over it - the size will be indicated. The Cache and Previews file can be ignored and/or deleted as Lightroom will rebuild these as and when necessary. In fact, some say that this is good practice as a rebuilt Cache and Preview folder will clean out any rubbish that may have accumulated within them. As you've probably gathered by now, it is the .lrcat file that should be backed up frequently - lose this to corruption and........
err - in a nutshell.
I'm going with Forseti (well almost - i use the Mac equivalent) :tup:
FWIW this is what I do. My file structure is much simpler - I rely on the lightning fast searches (well it is from google) within Picasa to find pictures by file name/tags.
What I do is import to an 'images' folder system on an ehd using flashpipe. The folder system is structured by source, ie stills, video, scans ect, and then by month, so January 2010's pictures from the camera for example are in 'images/still camera/january2010'. I then quickly go through them in picasa's thumbnail view ditching the obvious rubbish, then larger views to get rid of the less obvious failures. Then I tag them and rename them. I either do basic enhances in Picasa, or if something more adventurous is required a dedicated editor like Elements.
Backup is by syncback daily to a partition on my internal drive and a long stop monthly upload of 90% quality jpgs to flickr (would be 100% but my broadband is a bit on the slow side).
Andrew's and Forseti's systems sound pretty foolproof; I'd need another drive to emulate that.
Wow, i have just read this thread and it is something for this newbie to think about - a lot.
I have elements 7, free when i did a uni course that wasn't good. However i tend to burn my photos to disk and keep a copy on my seperate internal hd. I have a laptop.
Never thought about catalouging them as they are in their own folders named where they were taken, eg Scotland. I did try Picassa but probably wasn't using it right so depeted it. I use faststone to see my RAW files and delete what is rubbish, ok a lot of them are rubbish,lol. then i transfer them onto the other hd in a new folder with the place name on it. This gives me two copies, hd and Disk.
Is this ok or should i do something different and if so what?