My Archive Workflow

[imported_ScottBuckel]

My Workflow:

This is my general archive workflow. This is done with 100% of the images I capture. This system is a modification of the system promoted by Peter Krogh in his book: “The DAM Book” and I think this book is one ofthe best photographic purchases I have ever made. There is a very active forum that covers many of these issues(The DAM Book Forum). I will in a later posting discuss the workflow after archive. I feel the archive is very straight forward, while dealing with derivatives is not. I am working through these details right now and once I get everything gong on it seriously I’ll discuss it with the forum as well.

1. Ingest and rename images from CF Card. I use Image Ingester to do this. I name my files: Buckel_date_camera number. The date is YYMMDD format. The number comes from the sequential number generated from the camera. This system will allow me to take about 10,000 images a day and will be unique for about 100 years. While ingesting the images I not only rename and copy to a second drive, I also add copyright/contact info to each image. If I am working on a specific project I will add that to the caption information. Image Ingester makes this very simple, Breeze Systems Downloader Pro does this as well.

2. Use either Bridge or Lightroom to edit images. This will vary a bit depending on what I am doing. Since hard disk space is getting really cheap these days – verging on $0.25 per gigabyte, I do not delete many images. You have to delete tons of images just to save a few bucks. The really over exposed, blurry images are the only ones that get deleted these days. I will make adjustments in ACR at this point as well and this data gets saved in the xmp sidecar. In Lightroom (I just started playing with it – I will make sure xmp side cars get written.

3. Rate the images (this varies depending on project). The rating for a commercial shoot (I photography pottery for a few potters I know about 3 times a year) is a simple 1 star for ok images and 2 stars for the better ones. All other images get deleted. For my personal work or images that may go to an agency I rate using 4 to 5 stars system. 1 star images are ones that I may use in composite images, 2 star images may get used in slide shows for add addition information, but would not stand on its own. 3 star images are good solid documentary photos, 4 stars for images that are artistic and would stand completely on their own. 5 stars are the "Oh my god" images (very rare). The ratings help rapidly sort if I am looking for something to post or get ready to submit.

4. Add bulk metadata. I will add location information and high level data at this point - mainly things like locations. I will verify that I add the appropriate copyright and contact info is there in the meta data.

5. Convert raw files to *.dng format. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I wanted to do this. After thinking about how the digital world keeps changing I decided an open format is superior and a better way to ensure that the files will be able to be opened in the future.

6. Copy over to Raw Archive. I have a box that houses four drives that can be hot swapped. I purchased mine for Coolgear.com.

7. Copy over to Back up archive. I copy the files to a second drive in the box. I take this drive to work for long term off site storage. I have not done this, but I will burn these images to DVD for a second format storage.

8. Add to iView Media Pro (IVMP) catalog or make new catalog. Once the images have been converted I will add them to a catalog in IVMP (soon this will be replaced by Expression Media).

9. Add the images to catalog sets. I create catalog sets for the images to be able to find them at a moments notice. I like IVMP since it makes catalogs that I can edit on my laptop while traveling. This is not possible with Lightroom or Apeture.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I will posted other aspects ofthe workflow I am using in the future as well as my experiences in setting up and moving the older digital images into the workflow.

Scott

[imported_JeromeL]

what's your average time for all of this? say off of a 2gb cf card in RAW

[imported_ScottBuckel]

Originally Posted by JeromeL

what's your average time for all of this? say off of a 2gb cf card in RAW

Jerome -

2 gig off a CF card would be 100 photos for me. I usually would do this in two sessions. Initial screening of mages to throw away the junk and then later, I would carefully rate the images and complete the process. I think it would be about 1 to 1.5 hours to get the images into the archive directory and put into IVMP. Now if all the images suck, then it is much faster. If hte light was great and I was getting exactly what I want the time may be a little longer, if i needed to differentiate the images. I think I did a recent shoot of about 4 gigs (200 images) in about 2.5 hours.

I usually do the IVMP stuff a little at a time over time. I add new things all of the time.

Scott

[imported_JeromeL]

cool, thanks so much for this example!

[imported_ScottBuckel]

Just another note.

All of these steps can be spaced out over weeks to months if you want or need it to. I have taken weeks to rate images.

Also the DNG's and Raw files are copied to the Archive HD into directories that are the same size as a DVD. This is what Peter k calls buckets.

Scott