File Management, Sharpening, Backing up and Keywording
A photo from the Johnnie Walker Experience - I thought it would be awful but actually really very nice.
Introduction to the blog
Following on from a presentation regarding keywording, file management, sharpening and resizing at camera club I have a few thoughts. I have realised that I have not been engaging enough with the topics of the camera club so I have decided to start writing blog posts about them to engage my brain and try and focus my exceptionally short attention span! I also intend to have some actionable points in order to try and continue thinking about photography in the quest to improve.
The point in these posts is not to say I know better, it is to say I do it my way and to think about the two methods and engage some critical thinking. Writing and publishing it is more an accountability exercise than anything else but I think given there are very few notes given to members after a talk, it might be useful to see my nonsense. If people have an issue with what I say, or see something I have got the wrong end of the stick with please contact me. Someone has given up their free time to do a presentation, the least we can do is process the information instead of gazing vacantly into space! I have been guilty of that in the past.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated by my level of improvement so trying to kick myself up the backside and push myself.
Sharpening
Sharpening is an area I have often struggled with especially with wildlife photography and over sharpening in Lightroom creating a halo effect. Because I use Fujifilm cameras, the process is slightly different and I really must dedicate more time to learning. I use Topaz as an extra sharpening and de-noising tool but find it either has excellent or terrible results. I seem to struggle to see the intricate differences of sharpening an image so am too heavy handed. The problem was that with the slides shown by the speaker, I doubt the projector was able to really do them justice.
File management
The presenter suggested a format of storing images in a series of folders. I don’t particularly like this idea as it becomes very clumsy for finding images. I use Apple Photos (which is also available on Windows but not on Android) to catalogue and index my images - it provides a very quick system for finding images, it also means I have a 100% quality JPEG of every image worthy of keeping on my phone (when I have mobile reception or Wi-Fi at all times) which is very helpful for reference or showing off! I have never used keywording because although I see the merit, I have always thought life is too short. I have recently noticed that Apple is using AI to start categorising images which is very handy - for example you can search ‘bridge’ and it will find them all.
An example of the album naming system - it might also be in chronological order. It also shows the 3 years of photos I lost.
Backing up
I have a very painful relationship with this subject after being meticulously backed up, my external HD died and in the process of copying my spare HD to a replacement one, we were hit with a power cut that seemed to wipe both drives leaving me with a lot of photographs lost - I suspect I have a lot of them buried elsewhere but the thought and pain of the tedium of finding them is crippling my desire to do so! This new system will have all images stored on my External SSD, a backup HD and on iCloud.
File Management System
I have spent a lot of time trying to create a plan for a file storage system that incorporates a good backing up system and also hopefully manual keywording will become a thing of the past.
Given the sporadic nature of my photography, I do a lot of rugby games and what I consider “event” photography so I tend to use an event as a reference - for example If we went to Edinburgh like we did the other week, I would treat that as an event and the photographs would be stored in a folder named 20240930 Edinburgh. That means that in the events folder everything is stored chronologically and makes it easy to read.
While there are only so many events but I often take photographs of birds in the garden for example or a Milky Way shot, these don’t count as an ‘event’ so I have a catch all for everything else which I call ‘Monthly Misc. The plan is I pile all of my RAW images into a folder during the month and then edit them at the end. It is very easy to scroll through all the different monthly misc images in Apple Photos so quite easy to find images. The issue is my laziness mixed with excitement. If I take a photo that I must edit there and then, the workflow gets a bit clumsy, especially when I don’t edit the 1500 bird photos that month! It might well be worth my while manually keywording these images as there could be a photo of pasta next to a goldfinch next to a moon!
I have been developing a file management workflow which is far from perfect but a combination of a bit of thought and a bit of discipline, I am hoping that I might be close to a final system. This is based on previous experience, shortcomings and regrets. Memory space is cheap these days - there is not really much excuse for regrets.
Objective
To have all images saved as -
- Original RAW file - this can be revisited for re-editing in the future when software advances are made or as a redundancy if image files change or just to give me an opportunity to re-edit images from scratch at a later date when my skills improve.
- Edited TIFF or DNG - I have yet to work out the benefits of which of these will be better. This can be revisited if an image is to be adjusted for competition or printing purposes.
- Full sized JPEG - Mainly as a file to be loaded into Apple Photos for indexing but also as a quick way to share and have an emergency backup if all else fails.
The purpose is to have relatively quick access to images on both my desktop and laptop. Ideally on my iPad for editing with a pencil. Also having all three sets of images backed up on 2 separate hard drives and on the cloud. It also gives me the ability to go back to the edited version of a photo if I wanted to print or submit it for a competition.
Process
Import images to Photo Mechanic.
Cull images.
Copy selects to RAW folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD RAW EVENT].
Copy RAW FILE to backup drive and cloud.
Open selects in LR and edit.
Export as TIFF/DNG to Edited folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD EDIT EVENT].[image name:YYYYMMDD RAW EVENT].
Copy EDIT Folder to backup drive and cloud.
Export as 100% JPEG folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD JPEG EVENT].[image name:YYYYMMDD JPEG EVENT 000].
Copy JPEG Folder to backup drive and cloud.
Copy JPEG images to Apple Photos.
Create an event album.
Keyword images (?!)
Format memory card in camera.
Actionable points
Further expand my knowledge on sharpening. This is an area of weakness in my photography. A previously edited image has been panned for over sharpening on a photo critique site.
Consider the benefit of keywording and finding an efficient way of doing it.
To get past 1 blog post!
To be more disciplined in my file management system and not take lazy shortcuts.