Comments on: Photo Project: Archiving and Workflow

By: kyussmondo

kyussmondo — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:04:42 +0000

For organisation I use Lightroom 3. I used to use iPhoto but I needed something more, so then I tried Aperture but it is quite resource hungry even on my relatively new Mac! So then I moved to Lightroom and it runs quicker than Aperture 3. Applications like Aperture and Lightroom are specifically designed for photographers which makes the workflow a lot better. Photoshop is nice to have but it is too expensive and over complicated. Even iPhoto and Google Picasa are good enough for most things and will edit most RAW files.

I personally use Time Machine backup with my Mac. Every change I make automatically gets backed up every hour. I need a system that does it automatically otherwise I forget so for me backing up to be useful has to be easy and automatic. I am aware of other systems out there such as the Drobo which I know a lot of pros use for redundant RAID back-ups which duplicates data on drives so it one drive fails then you can just take it out and pop a new one in and it will repopulate the new drive. It is quite expensive though so Time Machine will suffice for now.

I think it is also important to back up offsite to the cloud to somewhere like Carbonite or even Flickr to protect against fire or theft or if all you drives fail at the same time.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:20:58 +0000

Fred/Bob,

As I suggested in the text,workflow is a very personal thing.

I do use Bridge quite regularly and sometimes find it useful. It is not IMHE ss powerful, flexible or a fast as a dedicated program such as Expression Media.

But all of these things come at a price. The most important thing is thta you have a workflow system that works for you. This must involve archiving religiously !!!

By: Fred

Fred — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:05:54 +0000

Having CS2 and Bridge I am trying to avoid shelling out on additional SW.
I wonder whether upgrading RAM would speed it up given the huge amount of data transfer required with RAW files.
I am upgrading mine to 2gb this week(costs less than 30gbp). Will report back.

By: Bob Martin

Bob Martin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:11:15 +0000

I downloaded the trial version of Expression Media 2 yesterday after reading your post and will be exploring it. Perhaps you could give me some pointers as to what sort of things I will be able to do with it that I couldn’t do with Bridge.

I’ve never found Bridge to be slow. Perhaps it depends upon what sort of folder structure you use to store your pics. I take your point that the size of the collection could affect the speed of operation but even a big collection can be broken down more efficiently using a hierarchical structure.

By: andy

andy — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:58:06 +0000

I don’t think Bridge copes well with big collection. It is quite slow and nowhere near as powerful as a dedicated program such as Expression Media.

By: Bob Martin

Bob Martin — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:48:05 +0000

Adobe Bridge is actually quite good for managing your shots and is free with Photoshop CS2 (I don’t know about later releases). It interfaces well with Camera Raw and Photoshop, allows you to use a hierarchical directory structure to store your shots, allows batch processing and easy viewing/editing of metadata including keywords, grading of shots and searching. It may not have all the facilities of eg. Aperture and Lightroom but if you’ve already got CS2 you don’t really need to shell out for another package.

By: andy

andy — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:14:04 +0000

Ruthless editing is always good! Ruthless tagging and organisation would be good too! Maybe I’ll index some more during the winter nights!

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:51:18 +0000

I use a Mac and use Aperture and love it! but I do not use Aperture to its fullest potential (nor the camera for that matter), but am getting better as time goes on. I also try and backup and store as much as possible and Aperture with its vault is at least another level of backup. Earlier ipods are great as back up devices.

Once again well done Andy.

By: Des

Des — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:03:12 +0000

An extra thought - with long term archiving itâ€™s worth considering not only the lifespan of the backup sources but also your own lifespan! Itâ€™s not much good putting your images on 300 year gold discs such as These if you are the only person aware of all that work or how to retrieve it. Itâ€™s also good to be ruthless with editing to keep the flow manageable.

By: John Hesp

John Hesp — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:31:10 +0000

Thanks Andy, very useful. I’ve found that whereas my ability to deal with camera technicalities has improved over time, my ability to deal with my growing number of images has got worse. iView was the software my pro friend advised before I even knew I needed it, so it’s good to see it endorsed here too. I think this will be something I invest in.

Thanks again for all the articles, it’s a resource I’ll be revisiting.

John