Lightroom workflow

[dragonone]

I'm curious how, how much, and where you store your photos....

Currrently, I run my photos in DxO for correction and exporting in *DNG format, and 170 photos was roughly 5gbs!
then I add them to the library in Lightroom for editing, presets etc, and export as jpg if i want to post them on flickr/fb and such

I don't think I'm at a level of photography where keeping the original RAW/DNG files is important to me (final jpg is enough), but everytime I delete the big originals lightroom tells me i have missing photos, and I'm not particularly fond of lightroom's libaray organization.

you guys must have crazy space if you keep all your raw files (tho i have 2TB total at the moment).

[mboldt]

I've got over 4TB of HDD Space dedicated towards photo backup. I also have a hard copy of everything on dual layer DVD... Now going to Bluray next week for backup.

I use Lightroom 2.0 for my RAW conversions, export straight into Photoshop and save as either a JPEG for web or TIF for print.

[dragonone]

guess i underestimated the total size of shoots. out goes the pr0n i guess lol

[rage2]

I have a huge fileserver that manages all my files. Everything is done over network. So far I've got about 60GB worth of files from the last year, all in RAW. I always keep the RAW files because I learn new tricks, and apply them to old photos quite often by creating a virtual copy.

Why do you guys convert to DNG? Lightroom works with the RAW files directly.

[dragonone]

i output as DNG because the only option for output in DxO is DNG or TIFF, they're about the same file sizes tho

60gbs eh? that's about.... 10-20 shoots?

[rage2]

About 3500 pics.

[soupey]

i keep raw or jpeg files, just dont import/convert to dng when importing into your catalog....

[89coupe]

What is your main purpose for using Lightroom? Cataloguing? Conversion? Editing or all of the above?

[Mitsu3000gt]

I keep the RAW files on 3 different hard drives, and JPEGS on Smugmug's servers. I also keep pictures from my holidays on DVD.

[Go4Long]

I keep the raw files, import to lightroom, then a few weeks after the race/shoot I will move them to an external drive. I have 16'000 pictures from last year still, and that's just the ones I kept...I took nearly 50'000 pictures last year. although I've started to clean up some of that now, clearing out some of my galleries from last year to get ready for this year.

I do essentially no editing to my bike shots, everything is from lightroom to the site. And lately I've started doing all my editing to my other shots inside lightroom as well with the exception of a couple stitches and what not.

[msommers]

Is there a reason you guys prefer LR vs PS for RAW import?

[TDFTW]

i do 99% of my editing in lightroom.

organizes photos
keywords photos
meta tags photos
browsing of photos so fucking easy
have my own one click presets for base adjustments, ie: 20 photos all under exposed by 2 stops, one click fixes.
auto rotate.
export photos and can automatically resize to my 1000px longest edge and do a little sharpening.

The software is just amazing, its the whole package

[G-Suede]

Anyone tried Bibble 5?

[Pollywog]

I have LR2, but I am used to my own way of organizing files on my drive and also find editing in Lightroom a little frustrating - most likely due to inexperience with the program. I also am very familiar with the Canon raw editor, so I usually use that and export to CS4. I keep all of my raws but I have 4 SATA bays in my Mac Pro, and with the way the cost of memory is going there isn't much need to worry.

One of my favorite tool boxes, for anyone who might care: http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=8

[TDFTW]

one thing i do with lightroom , a trick some of you could benefit from.

Copy files from memory card. save them on hard drive, organize into folders where they will be permanently.

do this before you even touch editing. then import photos into lightroom. your galleries are now permanent

[Mitsu3000gt]

I highly recommend Fast Stone Image Viewer for quickly going through images and deleting whatever isn't a keeper. I find it to be the quickest. It can handle RAW/NEF files as well.

[dragonone]

Originally posted by 89coupe
What is your main purpose for using Lightroom? Cataloguing? Conversion? Editing or all of the above?

just light editing and having fun with presets sometimes. It's also fun to see statistics of which focal lengths i like etc.

none of you use DxO? I'm not such an expert that I can look at a stock raw file and point out the perspective distortions, CA, or vignetting, but after seeing the before and after in DxO it looks pretty good. Also does noise control pretty well. I guess I like how it does everything for me and then I can edit the finer things to my own taste.

(I have a cracked version but it expired=( sooo close to buying it now haha).

[Neil4Speed]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
I highly recommend Fast Stone Image Viewer for quickly going through images and deleting whatever isn't a keeper. I find it to be the quickest. It can handle RAW/NEF files as well.

I really think that faststone is a bit of an unknown gem. I have been using it for the past couple of years to do quick batch converting when I throw things on e-bay etc.

I recently got LR2, just starting to get used to it, I really need to play around with it or... read a book on it.

[msommers]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
I highly recommend Fast Stone Image Viewer for quickly going through images and deleting whatever isn't a keeper. I find it to be the quickest. It can handle RAW/NEF files as well.

Sweet, definintely going to check this out!

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by msommers


Sweet, definintely going to check this out!

Its free, too. I'd never use it for editing or anything but its an awesome program. I use it while traveling as well to quickly delete non-keepers and maximize available space on my travel hard drives. Great for cutting 1000 pics down to 800, or whatever.