Not the most exciting aspect of the art of digital photography is it?! When I think of digital workflow I think of orderliness, process flows and 1001 pieces to a puzzle, all of which tend to make my eyes glaze over!

However, despite the dryness of this topic, past failures have taught me to recognise the value of having a well-planned, consistent workflow. I want to share with you a few simple tips that can streamline your workflow and make life easier for you in the long run.

But first, why is good workflow so important? Well, if we think about all the time and effort we put into creating our images; the creative thought process and planning, the energy you invest during a session, and the time you put into editing each image. This amounts to a huge personal investment. If you were to go to all this trouble only to be told that all your finished images were going to end up in a deep dark tunnel of unnamed files, missing directories, or at its worst, lost or deleted forever, would you bother putting in the effort in the first place? Very unlikely.

Here are a few steps you can take to ensure you are on top of your workflow from the moment you have captured those precious images. Grab a cuppa and let’s sink our teeth into this together....

Transferring and Organising your images

Ok, the first thing you need to do is get your photos off your camera card and into your chosen storage location, right? This may be the internal hard drive of your computer or you may choose to store them on a portable drive. There is no right or wrong place to store the originals of your images. What is important is that they are stored in a location that is easy to find and easy to sort through.

There are various ways to do this but I choose to use my computer’s operating system to copy the files from the card (using an sd card reader connected via usb) onto my chosen storage device. Others may choose to use programs such as Adobe Bridge or Lightroom to copy their files. Again, there isn’t a right or wrong way, but let me share my process with you.

I like to store my current working files on a portable ssd drive and I label this with the current year and ‘Working Drive’. Working off a portable drive means I can switch between working on my PC and my laptop without too much trouble. I recently purchased this small in size, but large enough in storage ssd drive which is super handy for on the go photography while travelling!

When copying the files, I like to organise them according to the year they were captured and type of session it was. For example, I have a folder on my portable drive for ‘2019’, and within that sub folders for each different type of session/project I am working on such as ‘Portraits & Lifestyle’, ‘Personal Projects’, ‘Corporate Jobs’. Within these folders, I have a different structure for each but I make sure I keep that consistent across all years.

This works really well for me but it’s not for everyone. Some people prefer to stick to Year/Location/Month for example, and this would work great for travel photographers. Others might purely want to keep to Year/Month if they are always working on the same type of project (for example if their images are purely of their own family over the years). It really is up to you to decide what will work best for you, the important thing is to keep this consistent EACH AND EVERY time you copy files to your computer to make your life easier in the long run.

Backup Backup Backup. Did i mention backup?

The next thing I always make sure I do is create a backup of these files the minute they are on my drive. A backup really must be made on a separate storage device and NOT on the same device the originals are stored. It’s no use creating a backup on the same storage space only to have that drive fail on you. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid here, so trust me on this! I have a separate portable drive labelled 2019 BACKUP which is an exact copy of my portable ssd. You may also like to do a 3rd backup (highly recommended!) to a cloud based storage facility, as you never know when a hard drive is going to fail you. This 3-way backup system is as close to fool-proof as I think you are going to get.

Importing images into a photo application

By now, I think we have established there is more than one way to cook an egg, right? The same goes for choice of photo editing applications and the import process. I personally begin my photo editing process in Adobe Lightroom and take them into Photoshop if needed. In order to edit in Lightroom (or any photo editing software for that matter!) you first must import your images into the application. The import function in Lightroom is straightforward and I prefer to retain the same file structure for my catalog as per my storage drive. I like to keep things same same, keeps my head from imploding!
Maintaining photo catalogs, particularly when you have amassed a large number of images in your portfolio can become very involved, and I won't go into how to keep these organised in this post. However, staying diligent and maintaining the same file structure you have set up to this point is going to make sorting through previous years of work so much easier for you in the long run.

Culling and Rating your catalog images

Once your images are in your chosen application, the next step is the culling process. This is when I decide between which images are going to be edited and which will be left for the cutting room floor. I like to do this fairly quickly, only selecting those images that speak to me and that are adequately exposed and in focus. I scroll through each image in the session and rank it as a keeper with a star rating (hitting 1 to 5 in lightroom). I might do this twice and anything left blank at the end of that process is deemed not to be edited.

One thing to clarify on this point, I always keep all the images from each session and I prefer to keep them in my lightroom catalog even if they haven’t been selected for editing. I find especially for composite work that I often end up using components from some images which I wouldn’t have initially chosen for editing. Some people choose to remove unranked images from their catalog entirely and this is fine too, but it’s important not to ever delete them off your hard drive, as you never know when you might need them again.

While I am editing, I filter out any of the unselected images by clicking on the star filter. This keeps things neat and easy for me to see how much progress I have made. Once I complete my edits, I then further rank it with a colour (I like green, but that’s a personal choice!), so I can easily see which are complete and which still need work.

Exporting your images

So, the edits are all done which means job is complete right? Not quite! The digital photography workflow is the processes you have in place from capture to delivery, so in order to deliver your beautifully edited images (or print them!) you will next need to export them from your editing application. Depending on whether the images are to go to print or to be used online (or both!) will determine the export settings you use.

If you haven’t already renamed your files prior to importing them, now is the time to export them with a practical naming structure. So what is a ‘practical naming structure’? It’s simply a standardised name format of the file that makes it easy to identify when/who/what the image is.

For example, some neat examples could look something like this:

Family Portrait Session:
[Year][Month]_[FamilyName]_[FileNumber]
201905_Smith_9876.jpg

Corporate Clients:
[PHOTOGRAPHER NAME]_[Year]_[BusinessName]_[FileNumber]
FINNEY_2019_AbcCompany_1234.jpg

Personal Projects:
[Year]_[ProjectName]_[FileNumber]
2019_BOTANIC_5555.jpg

If you can keep your file name structure consistent over time, it will make finding those old images so much easier!

Backup, again!

As I mentioned earlier, I always backup the original images the moment they are onto my hard drive. However, it doesn’t end there as its also necessary to maintain a backup of your edits, and this needs to be kept up to date.

There are plenty of software options out there that can help you with this process. The alternative to using backup software is to re-backup the entire folder once again into your backup drive or cloud based storage. If you choose to re-backup your entire folder, it is really important to make sure you have a 3rd backup of the last time you took a backup. Why you ask?! What happens if you clear out the folder, begin copying in the most updated files that have your latest edits on them only to have the primary drive fail in you? If there is no 3rd backup, all is lost! So, lesson is only do this if you have a 3rd drive or separate backup somewhere in the cloud.

Eat. Sleep. Learn. Repeat.

A good, consistent, efficient workflow is not something you tend to learn overnight. Usually we make a mistake, we work through the problem and we come out the other side with a better way of doing it. There is no single foolproof process, but this particular process which has formed from many mistakes over the years works more or less for me. I am sure that adopting even just one or a few of these tips will certainly set you on the right path.

DIGITAL. PHOTOGRAPHY. WORKFLOW.