Digital Photo Workflow & Editing

[Bill O]

Since there is a long thread relating to cats I don't think this is too out of line.

I'm curious what everybody is using to manage their digital images. Workflow, programs, add-ins, storage, etc.

I recently migrated to a Mac and just purchased Aperture 2. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm letting Aperture manage all my image files and right now I am just backing up with Time Machine, but may consider making "vault backups" to an external disk (the vault is an Aperture specific feature).

While Photoshop is the gold standard and comes with very powerful tools. I really like the slimmed down Aperture. I like how it manages versions and never touches my master originals. Photoshop was almost too overwhelming that I spent more time worrying about file management than shooting images. I think Aperture will change and also get me back to shooting in RAW full time now.

[M_Six]

I use Adobe Bridge and Photoshop. I have Adobe Lightroom, but it seems a bit redundant with Bridge. I don't have anything set to auto-download images. I prefer to move and classify the images myself. I suppose if I took pics all the time like some folks here I would consider using the auto-download and classify option.

My chief stumbling block is finding the time to properly edit my images. I have a ton of wedding pics I took this past summer which I still haven't edited. And I only got through Day Three of our recent 10-day Germany trip. Digital cameras make it too easy to take a thousand pictures.

[hobbes]

For photo management & simple/bulk manipulation (e.g., quick resizes for web): ThumbsPlus. For detailed editing: Photoshop.

[Snow Miser]

For photo editing, I use to use Photoshop, but found that for the relatively simple editing I do, it was to involved. I now primarily use a program called Photo Explosion Deluxe. It's a lot easier to use and still does a great job.

For image management, I like to maintain them in folders that I create myself. These are all backup to an external hard, and flash drives stored off-site. I have also currently started backing them up to the cloud.

[Bill O]

Thanks for your feedback and responses.

I'm surprised though. So many great photos on this forum, but so few contributions to this thread.

[Brad]

Thanks for your feedback and responses.

I'm surprised though. So many great photos on this forum, but so few contributions to this thread.

I am not a Mac person, so my tools would be different. With the struggles I have had dealing with exchanging files with Mac people, I would not go there.

[Charlie]

I never do any thing to my pictures ,the way i take them is the way i post them .
and thats because i dont know how to do all that fancy stuff

[Bill O]

Here's a good example of why I do post processing. True, with a point & shoot and capturing in JPEG much of this can be avoided.

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[Brad]

I shoot with a Canon camera - save the images a RAW files. Then after transferring to my laptop I open them in Adobe Elements. Right off the system asks me to classify the RAW images by the lighting conditions - daylight, cloudy, shade, flash, etc. Just like with Bill's example, the sunrise shot the other day was flat when first viewed on the computer - and it it did not represent what I saw. Just tell it the conditions were cloudy and the image popped to show what was really there.

[Charlie]

ok i see the differences
but with the point and shoot it looks good is that just the way they work