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06-27-2011, 03:37 AM   #1
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HELP! With my photo fileing!

#1 Just trying to wade through all my holiday photos about 1000 shots. Trying to find best way to sort through, delete the mistakes and put the favs to the side.
What do you think is best way to tackle this. I started with just the file system but I couldn't see the RAW files. Then tried my Photo Shop elements but struggling in getting thru it all.

#2 Needing some general tips on workflow - sorting from shots from camera, achiving and selecting the pick of the bunch to work on in pp.

06-27-2011, 03:42 AM   #2
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This may not neccesarily be the answer you want - since it isn't 'free', but Lightroom does what you describe, and quite well.

You have smart catalogues, and the ability to file pics and setup keywords etc. Can easily link to flickr for publishing. Workflow wise you can sync images taken in the same conditions (i.e, WB all the pics taken down the beach at a particular time, etc)

It also has the ability to preview images well, and mark them, either with 'flags', 'ratings' or 'colours', you can then sort, display, filter on all that criteria.

They offer a trial on the adobe website if your interested in giving it a test drive... it may meet all your needs...
06-27-2011, 03:48 AM   #3
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Thanks Adrian, Lightroom WILL be my next purchase but my internet connection isn't playing too nice with largish files so a demo is out of the question.
06-27-2011, 03:50 AM   #4
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RawTherapee is a smaller option (and donationware based) ... I've only played with it briefly, but I know some here regard it highly and feel it offers perhaps better rendition of Raw->JPG than LR/ACR does...

06-27-2011, 06:23 AM   #5
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Hi

Try Picasa from Google
Free and works with RAW.. Both PEF and DNG, views and edits.
To see the Raw files, on the upper menu bar select TOOLS then OPTIONS. Within File Types check the RAW box.
After editing the RAW file there is a small box at the upper right in the Library view that says Save to Disk.
This will save the original RAW and convert the modified image to JPG.

Last edited by bobpur; 06-27-2011 at 06:38 AM.
06-27-2011, 06:35 AM   #6
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You could try Picasa. It's really good at sorting photo files and develops RAW files too. It can sort for faces (people), date, tags. It allows some limited adjustments, but it's strength is file storage and sorting. Moving files from one folder to another is so easy, by sorting or just drag and drop the thumbnails from one folder to another. Picasa is totally free too, just download from Google.
I copy my shots from the memory card to a new folder in 'My Pictures' and then open with Picasa, delete the duds and sort the ones that I want to PP to a new subfolder. I then open the subfolder with a more advanced image editor.
06-27-2011, 06:41 AM   #7
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Try ExifPro, way smaller and supports many RAW format with mark/ grade/ color tag features when browsing pictures.
embeded JPG can be extract directly also.

06-27-2011, 12:45 PM   #8
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For short term, I just dump them in a file by date. I may build more files for subjects or events and move them there. The programs mentioned above can do a great job of identifying favorites and sorting, but I tend to want to see folders for years and subfolders for dated uploaded...
06-27-2011, 01:06 PM   #9
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Another vote for Picassa.

For a free tool, it's great for organising things. I still use Adobe CR to process the DNGs, but picassa is perfectly good for sorting things out. Runs quicker than iPhoto by miles.
06-27-2011, 07:51 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by Tonto Quote
#1 Just trying to wade through all my holiday photos about 1000 shots. Trying to find best way to sort through, delete the mistakes and put the favs to the side.
What do you think is best way to tackle this. I started with just the file system but I couldn't see the RAW files. Then tried my Photo Shop elements but struggling in getting thru it all.

#2 Needing some general tips on workflow - sorting from shots from camera, achiving and selecting the pick of the bunch to work on in pp.
You don't mention the platform, but on windows Faststone is useful for browsing. It's free to try, and only asks for a donation for personal use.

Paul
06-27-2011, 08:34 PM   #11
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If you will eventually get Lightroom, I'd recommend Photoshop Elements for now. It has a good built in organizer that has the advantage that any keywording, tagging, or star rating will be readable by Lightroom. Adobe uses a consistent sorting format among its photo programs. Also there are things that you can do with the Elements ability to use layers that you'd find useful even after getting Lightroom. Picasa is a good program but any sorting you do with it will not translate to Lightroom, which sort of makes a lot of work redundant.
06-27-2011, 08:47 PM   #12
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Aperture does essentally the same job as Lightroom but is only $79. It is, like Lightroom, an excellent tool for doing exactly what you describe. Sorting through 1,000 photos is no big deal honestly with one of these 2 products.
06-28-2011, 01:54 PM   #13
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Faststone is another good one.
06-28-2011, 03:11 PM   #14
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I also really like Picasa, and still find myself only opening Lightroom once I pick out the favorites for retouching and fixing. I do the bulk of inspecting a shoot and just general organizing my accumulated files, from right in Picasa. The price is right too - and it's built in editor tools honestly are fine for the little fixes that one might need to do . . . there are lots of photos I keep just for myself, that I do not have to share with clients, publish online a portfolio, or print - I'm happy with the minimal tweaks available in Picasa, for things that are only important to me. I believe these are called "snapshots" lol!

I'll speak now as someone coming from the tech fields - you also need to have some organization among the raw folders where you're sticking your pictures, something that makes sense to you. (...and you back it all up frequently, RIGHT ?!?) I'll share mine, and I'm sure others have shared their own methodology in older threads. I loathe data recovery jobs where people have their files all over the damn place, no discernible methodology or real assurance I got "everything" before Wheezy the Sad Hard Drive gave up the ghost.

I find that at this point, I am shooting a dozen or so - give or take - times per month, usually hundreds per session. Some are just for my own interest, some are for clients. At this point, I am okay blending those but I can see the day coming when I might prefer one more layer of sorting . . . but for now, that's my workflow and storage, personal and business alongside each other. Inside the My Pictures folder, I have subdirectories that are years. Obviously those line up nicely, one after the other, so just the numerical value works. Inside those directories, I have the months formatted as "01-2011" for January 2011, then "02-2011" for Feb 2011, and so on. I do it this way because that forces them to line up nicely in Windows Explorer, by date. Yes, you can tell it to sort literally by date too, but sometimes my file dates are not the same as the shoot dates and it gets mucked up. This way the folder titles force it to be chronological, which is helpful when I am looking for photos from a certain shoot.

Inside the month folders, I use proper names to describe the shoot. I do not so much care if these line up chronologically inside the months, because (in my memory) it gets a little muddled anyway - I just remember that I shot this client and all those sunsets, both in Decemeber. Each has a folder with a name that makes sense to me. And as I said, it's only a dozen or so each month at this point, easy to glance at that list and find what I want fast.

Oh, and when I edit something in LR, polish it up for presentation of some sort, I always export it with the file name "LR_pentaxfilename.jpg" to easily differentiate it - and I drag it (in Picasa) to lie next to its original.

I am trying to be better about tossing the Meh photos sooner and more ruthlessly, but it's hard when hard drives are so cheap, lol! Poor motivation :-P. But I do like to be able to look through a folder in Picasa and just enjoy the best stuff. I often take a large number of photos of the same thing, to get The Picture (I'm sure we all must) and I try to sift through those and toss the ones that don't make the cut right away, it just gets so, so clogged with 100 photos of a rose, you know? It also makes me a better editor, to not spend ages attached to mediocre photos, I think. I find it very hard to go back to those old, bloated photos and toss stuff a long time after the shoot, I wonder what is up with that???

Give Picasa a whirl, it really is a great "first layer" tool - LOADS better than just Windows Explorer, not huge/expensive/overbuilt for basic sorting (and tweaking snapshots nobody else cares about) like Lightroom.
06-28-2011, 07:51 PM   #15
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More important than the specific software is having a strategy. I recommend The DAM Book, by Peter Krogh. Armed with good ideas on how to go about things, any of the aforementioned programs can work for you, but without a strategy, none will help on their own. bTW, I use ACDSee Pro.
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