figure out a better digital workflow for my photos

Works nicely.

Shooting JPEG in AdobeRGB.
Camera downloads into an ‘incoming’ folder.
From there I move to a) the bin, b) ‘selected’ or c) ‘medium’.
The ‘selected’ pics are processed in photoshop to make web/printable versions and saved along with the original in monthly folders.
The ‘medium’ pics are exported at small size (800 pixels) and stored without originals. These are the pics that I’d put in an album, but wouldn’t share with others.

Erm… that’s about it. The conversion to printable/web picture is done with a photoshop action which adds frame, copyright message etc.

I currently have my workflow down to a few sheets of diagrams scribbled on A5 scrap paper.

Three applications – Picasa for sorting, Photoshop for editing and some sort of CD burner (actually I think Picasa can do that) for archiving.

A neat directory structure which should continue to work as my collection grows.

Getting there… but I’m still undecided about shooting Raw or Jpeg. Raw will obviously give me better quality results in the end, but it’s a lot slower to proof photos and their stored size is much larger.

I’m on the borderline of sorting my digital workflow, but keep changing ideas (what colour space to shoot, RAW or jpeg etc). I’ve been in discussions with a colleague who is just ahead of me in sorting his workflow/colour management and I know I have to deal with it.

Issues to consider:

Shooting format – probably AdobeRGB and RAW.

Archive format – RAW would require a larger hard drive and DVD burner, I can cope with JPEG with my current drive and CD writer.

Discards – delete, archive small copies and delete, keep anyway? I don’t want to discard something which later turns out to be useful.

Output for web – I think I have this one sorted out already, I have an action to add a frame and copyright message.

Output for print – I really haven’t visited this area properly yet, I got in a right mess with colour management and borderless printing when the computer and printer argue over who is doing what job.

I’m using more software than I’d like (ideally I’d just use one program), but I get my photos downloaded, sorted and online much quicker now. So I’ll mark this as done.

I think I’ve got it down to using Photoshop Elements 4.0 and Irfanview. Irfanview is a bit clumiser to use than the Canon browser software but much faster and can do more. The last two games I’ve had my photos up before midnight, so that is an improvement for sure.

I did a fresh install of Photoshop Elements 4.0 on my laptop and activated it over the weekend and installed the Canon software, too. I also found a way with Infanview to autorotate the photos taken in portrait mode, so I have that workaround if for some reason the the Canon software doesn’t work. Ideally, I’ll learn to use PSE to the point that it’s all I need, but at least so far, I don’t know all (most?) of the functions.

I’m the team photography for the local pro hockey team, and when I get home at night, it takes me 2-3 hours just to download just to download the images from the memory card (using USB 2.0 – I do not have Firewire), doing a batch rename, doing a very quick review to delete the bad images, and then select photos to upload to my online album. That process sort of worked before I went back to work, but it’s more critical now that I’m back at work to streamline the process, especially for weeknight games.

Last night I brought my laptop to the game and took only a few third-period photos, so I set up the laptop in the owners’ box and downloaded photos before the game ended. But when I got home, I had a hard time fixing the orientation of photos in portrait orientation, and then had major problems uploading from the laptop.

I need to get a consistent set of software on my desktop and laptop for starters, and learn the best way to use them to speed up this process.