I’ve recently been struggling with my workflow. Basically, I took too many photos, too quickly. Well, too quickly for me to manage them. I wanted them processed and uploaded as soon as possible, and this caused chaos on my machine. There were folders all over the desktop with ridiuclous descriptions. I wish this was the only storage place; they were everywhere. I would immediately import to Lightroom and process. The files would eventually be moved to their home in iPhoto, but then Lightroom would lose them. It would cause an issue if I had to go back to the original edit.
I am generally a pretty well organised person. I have a somewhat clean machine. iPhoto is, and has to be, well organised. I have divided the photography section into years, and then sorted into the events that have taken place with a date included. And I love iPhoto. I didn’t want to move away from it and then completely use Lightroom as my browser. So, something had to be done. Luckily, Lightroom is pretty damn awesome. Besides the ease of developing photos, it allows you to sync up folders – And this would solve the bulk of my issues.
The new process:
This is how I’m going to try things. It might not be perfect just yet, but it’s all part of the learning curve.
- Dump the memory stick into a new folder in my ‘photography’ stack in the dock. (While I would like to import directly into iPhoto, I still prefer to delete before I add them. I think this still needs improvement)
- Browse and delete all unwanted photos.
- Import into iPhoto. Here’s a cool trick if you didn’t already know it: Create one folder per event and name them accordingly. Import each folder individually into iPhoto folders and the name of the event will automatically be added to the album name. It’s handy.
- Next, you need to import into Lightroom. I already have a 2011 import going in my library, with several events. I right-click on the 2011 folder and select “Synchronise Folder…”. I choose to review which photos to take, even though I’m taking them all. I hit import and sit back until I get the beep letting me know it’s done.
- I go through each event in the library and flag each photo I want to develop. This way, I always know which photos I’ve worked on.
- I develop each photo individually. I go and do the stuff I need to do to make them all a little bit better
- Export & upload. I previously used to export at full size with my watermark and then batch resize using Preview. Now I’ll export and resize using Lightroom in one step.
So that’s pretty much it. It’s been working for the last few weeks, but I’m sure it’ll be refined as time goes on. How do you do things?
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