As a photographer, you spend more time in front of the computer than behind the camera these days. And that’s not because the photos all require extensive post-processing. On the contrary, this can be done very quickly for most images, assuming the image was carefully exposed. The real effort is in managing the images. Our post-shooting workflow is the subject of this blog post.

Sifting and sorting out

The first and perhaps most important step on the computer is sifting and sorting out the images. Everything that is not technically flawless, will of course go into the virtual trash can. Then we decide which photos from a series are “keepers”, meaning which ones will be archived. As a rule, we keep four or five variants (so-called “similars”) of the same subject. If possible and if it fits the subject, we keep both landscape and portrait formats.

This decision process shouldn’t take too long. If you haven’t decided within five to ten seconds whether a particular image is a keeper, then it’s usually not really convincing and you can delete it.

We do the sifting and sorting in Adobe Bridge or any other viewer that can display RAW files.

Renaming the files

The remaining photos will be renamed to ensure that there aren’t two files with the same name. Our photos are simply numbered. This can be done conveniently (semi-) automatically in Bridge or other programs.

Copying the photos to the final destination

The renamed files are then copied from the local hard drive to the final destination, in our case that’s an external USB 3 drive.

Importing into Lightroom

The photos are now imported into Lightroom from their final destination. Using appropriate import templates, all photos are already assigned copyright information. Sharpness parameters as well as lens corrections are also applied.

Keywording

Even before editing, we add keywords to the photos. This step is really very important and it should therefore be done very carefully. Insufficient or no keywording at all is a guarantee that you will not be able to find your pictures again. Seven to ten keywords per picture should be the minimum (for us it can be up to 50 or 60 because of our photo agencies…). We do the keywording of our photos in Lightroom.

Data Backup

Before we format the memory cards, we make of course a data backup. The new photos are automatically mirrored to a second USB 3 drive. The Lightroom catalog is also included in the backup. We run an automatic backup daily at the end of our working day.

At regular intervals, a third external hard drive, which is stored off-site, is also updated with the new or changed data. That means that each file exists three times on three different storage devices.

Why Bridge and Lightroom?

At first glance, it may seem cumbersome to sort out the images in Bridge, rename them, and copy them to the external hard drive before importing them into Lightroom. After all, you can do all these steps directly in LR. We have two main reasons for doing this:

  • When we return home from a trip, we usually have thousands of photos. Importing and creating preview files for thousands of photos takes quite a long time in Lightroom. Bridge, on the other hand, simply accesses the folder structure of the hard drive without the need for importing the images.
  • As far as we know, the function for renaming files is unfortunately still not solved reasonably in Lightroom. The main shortcoming is that Lightroom does not remember which sequential number was assigned last. So you need to keep a manual record. Bridge, on the other hand, remembers the last sequence index number used and automatically starts with the next higher number when renaming the next images. *.

For us, using a “front-end”, in this case Bridge, is therefore the more convenient method.

* We are still using an older version of Lightroom. If this should work in Lightroom CC by now or if you know where to find this function, please let me know.