Need a good workflow system

I've been shooting U/W seriously for about a year now and still not developed a good consistant workflow system. My files are piling up on random hard drives with random labels and I'm not sure how to best sort, edit and file them. The more I shoot, the worse it gets.

Can anyone point me to a reference or share some detaily of their system from start to finish with me?

I use:

D200 (always shoot RAW + JPG)

Windows Vista w/ new high speed laptop

Adobe PS CS3

Adobe Lightroom

Any help is greatly appreciated.

John

I've been shooting U/W seriously for about a year now and still not developed a good consistant workflow system. My files are piling up on random hard drives with random labels and I'm not sure how to best sort, edit and file them. The more I shoot, the worse it gets.

 

Can anyone point me to a reference or share some detaily of their system from start to finish with me?

 

I use:

D200 (always shoot RAW + JPG)

Windows Vista w/ new high speed laptop

Adobe PS CS3

Adobe Lightroom

 

Any help is greatly appreciated.

John

Hi John,

Looks like you've got the tools for an excellent workflow system minus one component. I'd suggest picking up Scott Kelby's "Photoshop Lightroom for Digital Photographers". Scott's book reorganized my workflow into something more consistant and reliable.

When I finish a shoot (above or underwater) I:

1. Use lightroom to import & backup the files from the CF card to the internal laptop drive and backup to a portable hard drive and adding the photoshoot site information to the meta keywords.

2. I go through that shoot in lightroom, flagging keepers and rejects and rating the really really good photos.

3. Purge the rejects.

4. Go back through and rate the rest of the images.

5. Filter by rating, and make any lightroom adjustments when needed & Photoshop anything that needs...

6. Then I take the keepers and throw them into Photoshow Producer (slideshow software) with some music, post it on the web and send a link to everyone I took diving.....

Hope this helps,

Joel

Thanks for the info, I am definately interested in the lightroom reference. I really don't know the best way to use the software yet, but can tell that it should greatly streamline my post processing and filing.

John

Lightroom and CS3 together seem to form a great workflow system. I just started using both so can't comment too much, but having moved from a fragmented Breezebrowser-Capture One-Photoshop workflow to something more consistent seems good.

Lightroom is a lot like Capture One - it's adopted all the things I like about C1 and seems a bit faster at rendering the thumbnails.

Cheers

James