Storage after a shoot

[copper]

My question is what do you store after the post processing.

You do a two hour photoshoot. You have 200+ pictures. You have the model pick out her photos lets say 10 for a nice even number. You have 200+ proofs (small jpgs) and 200+ Raws and now your 10 PSD files. What do you keep / what do you get rid of?

Do you only keep the Raw, PSD and the finished JPGs that she liked and get rid of the rest. Oh and keep the ones you like also for your Portfolio.

This is all about storage one shoot equal 8 gigs of space.

Thanks

[photonewb]

I've heard differing opinions...some keep the psd, some don't and only keep the edited jpeg and the raw

it's all going to boil down to what you want to save, and how much money you're willing to throw at storage. External hard drives are relatively cheap so some people are willing to just keep adding.

[ngoduyviet]

I keep everything, storage is really cheap nowadays.

[swanny338]

I keep everything for a while.. But occasionally go through clean out everything but the keepers. So I cut the 200 down to about 50.

I keep the RAWs and psds.

[MicWayWal]

When I first rename and adjust my images, I burn a DVD of what I have and take them off site to store, hopefully never to be used again. But I can if the need arises.
I then make copies on another drive.
When finished, I move ALL files to the other storage drive. I then burn another 2 or 3 DVDs with all the files that I have.
Now in reality I have three copies for permanent storage. 1. original DVD, 2. hard drive and 3. finish DVDs.

[msabas]

I cant say much about raw but.. I usually keep the psds and all photos try to burn them on to dvd's even if it takes two or three of them.. this way i can just label them and store those in a box.

I also have an external drive that i keep for back up as well. I usually compress a folder and store it ...

[z-monster]

Originally Posted by ngoduyviet

storage is really cheap nowadays

Yes indeed it is.

[doctahjones]

i'm about to get to this point too, especially since i'll have my first paying client soon (yay!).

personally i would keep only the raws, and depending on how much editing you did, keep the psd's too. i wouldn't see a need to 'backup' jpg's, other than keeping a few sizes for online/print ports. i wouldn't figure that would take up -too- much room. i figure if you only spent ~10 min editing a raw to basically convert to jpg, why keep the jpg? now if you spent quite a few hours editing a raw/psd it would make sense to go ahead and keep it, unless you want to put in all that time again into editing...

i'm also about to 'upgrade' to an external raid 1 1TB set. external so if there's a fire i can grab it real quick in case something happens, and raid'd so if one drive dies i don't loose everything.

i'll also probably look into online backups as well, again only saving the raws. i would say it's better to start backing up from the beginning, as backing up 1TB over most internet connections would suck for the first couple of weeks. :)

plus you can always charge an 'archive fee' if someone needs to get another copy from you after X days.

[darktiger]

I usually delete with I consider as crap. So out of say 200 images I will usually end up with 123-130(I am a photo pack rat). Then I backup a highres jpeg and raw to DVD and one copy to a 1.5TB backup drive in a BlacX docking station with a 1.5TB drive in it.

[GUER03]

Originally Posted by swanny338

I keep everything for a while.. But occasionally go through clean out everything but the keepers. So I cut the 200 down to about 50.

I keep the RAWs and psds.

I do this also. If it's not good enough to use in a portfolio or not clean shots of a star that can be used it's gone. No room for images that can't use, especially since I shoot over 1000+ images per game.

[janikphoto]

Here's what I do... or try to do (I've been lagging on the dvd burning). I do a shoot, load it on my main HD, copy it on my second HD and burn a dvd. Then I do edits, psd files, and final jpegs. I then copy the psd and jpegs over to the 2nd HD and call it a day. So, I have two copies of the finished edits and three copies of the original files from camera...

Oh, and all my folders have a dating system of YYMMDD, so I can easily track shoots by date at a glance.

[ilove2eatcake]

i keep everything. i'm a pack rat too though. i was really sloppy at first and had stuff all over the place, so in addition to backing up everything, create a system that works for you. i backup all originals (RAW files) to disc and to external hard drives. on my external hard drives i've created a simple folder system to help me stay organized with original files, edited files, album files, etc. viet is right, storage is cheap. you can get 1TB external hard drives for like $100 now. if you want even more backup, i also use smugmug. you can upload your high-resolution images to smugmug. hope this helps :)