Do you have The Fear? That nagging feeling that keeps you up at night? The Fear of the thing that can strike at any time and totally debilatate the unprepared? Hard drive failure can be one of the… [hold on a second, you might say, Hard drive failure? that's The Fear?]. It sure is. Read on to find out why.

Hard drive failure is one of those things that everyone will face at some point - kind of like life, death and taxes. If you haven’t experienced it yet - you will.

Scott Kelby has experienced it and, as a result, has ‘The Fear’. If it’s ever happened to you, you’ll know what I’m talking about. After it happens the first time, you’ll do anything and everything you can to prevent it from ever happening again. Irreplacable photos can be lost. Days, weeks, months or years of work and emails can go down the tube. Yesterday, Scott Kelby posted his answer to The Fear right here. It is a very elegant system for backing his photos up all along the way - from capture to permanent storage. Check out his full update here.

Scott’s list of backup hardware is impressive, toting everything from the Drobo to the Epson photo viewer. One thing Scott didn’t list, though, was the price tag. I did some informal calculations and his setup runs somewhere in the $2500-$3000 range.

So, the question is, hHow much are you willing to spend to protect your data? In most cases, every additional level of protection costs more $$.

My magic equation is as follows:

• No immediate backup after shooting. I’d like to purchase one of the Epson units mentioned above, though.
• I download the photos from my card to my laptop, when on the road. If I’m on a longer road trip, I’ll then backup the photos to a portable hard drive.
• Once back home, I transfer the photos to my main PC. I backup the hard drive on my main PC 3-5 times/week to an external hard drive sitting on my desk.
• About once a month, I’ll backup my PC to an external hard drive that I store off site (in case of theft or fire).

Do you have The Fear? If not, you will. Or, if you’re wise, you’ll follow others and begin your backup plan today!

Today’s workflow topic is one of the most variable, fluid and changing of all the parts of the whole thing. Editing. Editing can take seconds or days, depending on the effort given to the original capture and the final output. As this post is only a few hundred words long and hundreds of thousands have been written on the topic of editing digital photographs - I’ll keep it basic. I’ll also point toward some resources that have been valuable to me.

Also, with it being Thursday and all - I threw in some Flickr shots that were processed using Scott Kelby’s Seven Point System (yip, it’s such a great process, there’s a Flickr group for it - see the Resources section for me).

My Editing Flow

After importing my photos I perform picture-wide edits in Lightroom. Exposure, contrast, clarity, global saturation, basic cropping and B&W conversion are just a few of the things I’ll update directly in Lightroom. I’ll then select additional photos that need the same adjustments and will click the Sync button, transferring the settings to all the photos immediately.

After those changes are made, I’ll identify that top rated photos and open them in Photoshop. I’ll then make any additional adjustments that only Photoshop can handle. That includes masking, local adjustments, more serious tonal changes, double processing, etc. I won’t go into all the details of what happens in Photoshop - there is so much to do I can’t even hope to scratch the surface. Look for future posts for information on specific techniques, or check out the resources below.

Also, I’ve considered using NIK’s new product, Viveza for local adjustments. I’ve mentioned it previously, but it’s simple user interface and elegant ability to make selections and adjustments to just parts of a photo are truly amazing. PhotoWalkPro.com recently did a great review/thorough explanation of the product. Check out the posts on it here and here. The only downside is that it is $250 - so pulling the trigger is a little tough.

After making Photoshop adjustments, I save the photo as a .psd. Lightroom displays it just as it does the DNG files, allowing me to export it, print it, etc.

Editing Resources

Some of the following resources are free and some are paid. I’d highly recommend each one, though, as they’ve taught me a ton. If you’re interested in more free options, you can search learn photoshop in Google and find even more options.

Scott Kelby’s Seven Point System, by Scott Kelby

The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers, by Scott Kelby

PhotoshopUser TV

National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) at PhotoshopUser.com.

Seven Point System Before and After - From Flickr

Click on an image for a larger view/more information in Flickr.

Yesterday, we covered photo and folder naming. It seemed to me that it was worth covering an important topic about the photos themselves - the format I choose to use. I won’t make you read to the end - I prefer DNG. I shoot in RAW and convert all of my RAW files to DNG right upon import to Lightroom (yip, I don’t have any RAW files on my computer, just DNGs). Read on for more information.

Digital SLR cameras can shoot JPEGs. The downside is that they don’t carry all the original information - they become slightly compressed and are only 8 bit. Luckily, digital SLR cameras can also shoot in RAW, a format that stores the photo uncompressed and in 16 bit. While the photos aren’t necessarily twice as good as JPEGs, they do carry important details in highlights, shadows and other areas. That allows potential recovery of all white or ‘blown out’ areas and generally more flexibility in post-processing. (For a more extensive look at JPEG vs RAW, you can go to http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/raw-vs-jpeg/).

RAW Drawbacks

Shooting RAW does come with a few drawbacks, though. One is that each camera has its own RAW format. Personally, that frightens me a little bit. I don’t like thinking that all the pictures I took are stored in a format that only the particular manufacturer (Canon in my case) is privy to.

Second, the files can end up quite a bit larger than a RAW counterpart. When taken with a 10MP camera, a typical JPEG is 3-4 MB and a RAW file is 10MB.

Lastly, non-destructive editing and other metadata can’t be stored directly in a RAW file - they require something called a sidecar file. So, for every RAW file processed with a program like Lightroom or Camera RAW, a second file is created that contains nothing but information about the changes made. If those changes need to be saved, that file always has to be toted around with the RAW file. It can get quite annoying.

Why DNG Rocks

Enter DNG. DNG is a RAW archival format created by Adobe. Adobe created it to address the outbreak of RAW formats, allowing a common, documented format that has a higher chance of being documented for years to come. Don’t forget that Adobe also created PDF and a few other long-lasting file formats. They have a history of getting this sort of thing right more often than most others. For me, benefits of equal size include:

• Smaller File Size: They use a compression that doesn’t sacrifice quality, allowing 50% decrease in file size in some cases.
• Data Stored in the File: Non destructive editing and metadata are stored in the file itself, eliminating the need for sidecar files.

Image Format Comparison

See the following for a summarized comparison of JPEGs, RAW and DNG. Overall, I prefer DNG. It keeps file sizes down, is open format, doesn’t need a sidecar and maintains all the original data. In certain circumstances, JPEG can come in handy. Having sharpening and other settings automatic can reduce processing time.

For complete information on DNG, straight from the source, check out the Adobe page on it here.

I wanted to stay true to my weekly image and my goal to post every day about my workflow. The result was pictures about my workflow! See below for pictures and descriptions of my folder structure and naming conventions.

As picture totals rise into the tens of thousands, a critical part to effectively storing, backing up and retrieving photos is organizing and naming them properly.

Note: Lightroom helps facilitate organizing and naming the photos properly (I know I keep mentioning Lightroom-I’ll dedicate one post this week on just it).

Another Note: As with other parts of the workflow, these are my preferences and may not suit everyone. Naturally, I’ve found it to work very well and highly recommend it, but there are certainly other ways to go. The most important part of the process is to follow it religiously. Without rigid consistency, pictures become lost and time is wasted determining what the photo is and where it fits into the bigger picture.

Folder Structure

I organize my pictures into two primary folders - personal and business. I then break them down into subfolders as shown below. I then break each of those areas into what I search for most frequently. This could be done many ways, but I’ve found that by client makes the most sense for the business and by the year makes the most sense for my personal folders.

Next, the structure is broken into individual shoots. I start with the year name, then a two digit month and then a description of the shoot. This automatically sorts folders chronologically and creates a lot of consistency in scanning down through the lines, making finding a particular shoot during a particular time very easy.

Naming Conventions

As you can see, my file names are named similarly to the shoots. The only addition is a counter at the end of the picture. It increments for each new photo from the shoot. This allows me to very easily match up any exported photos back to their original shoot, understanding who/what the shoot was for and when it was done - all by a quick visual scan.

A good friend of mine recently joined the corporate world. Among other things, he’s commented on the use of so many ambiguous or nebulous terms and concepts. One of those hot (and sometimes nebulous) terms is workflow. While workflow can be ambiguous and and, in some cases not very meaningful, it can be very powerful and important to describe how someone can work more effectively and efficiently.

In simpler terms, workflow can be described by answering three questions. What do I do? What order do I do it in? What tools do I use to do it?

So, for a theme this week, I’ll describe my workflow. Today will describe my photo workflow from the 50,000 foot view. It will describe what I do and the order I do it in. Then, additional posts this week will provide more detail into particular steps or tools.

My Workflow - An Overview

We’ll take a look at this from the perspective of an actual shoot. I’ll set each as time stamps, reflecting roughly the amount of time each stage takes. This is an average and spaced out over an hour for the sake of breaking out the time - some shoots will go faster and some will take longer.

Minute 0 : Start setting up for the shoot. Get camera ready. Canon 40D, with lens - almost always the 24-70 2.8L or 70-200 2.8L. Make sure I have enough memory cards. Make sure the lens is clean. Make sure the settings are where I need them. Check white balance, ISO, F-stop and Shutter Speed. Make sure the time setting is correct (the photos’ time stamps need to be accurate if I want to easily synch with any GPS data) Check the battery.

Minute 5 : Set up other gear. This depends largely on the type of shoot. If shooting landscape, make sure tripod and shutter release are set up. Turn on the GPS and set to take automatic readings every 5 minutes. Attach any needed filters. If a portrait session, set up any flashes, reflectors, etc. Possibly connect camera directly to laptop to shoot tethered.

Minute 10 : Begin shooting. This is one of the steps that has the most potential for variety. If it is a shoot for kids - it needs to be over quickly (a good number of our shoots for kids take 20 minutes or so - sometimes stretching to a few of the 20 minute sessions if other poses or outfits are needed). If it’s a landscape, I might be there for 3 or 4 hours waiting for various lighting. Make sure to continue changing settings as appropriate when the shot changes significantly. Switch filters, memory cards and batteries as the need arises.

Minute 30 : Pack it all up. Head back to the digital lab (either my office, or in the field, a laptop and a restaurant or the hotel).

Minute 35 : Insert cards into CompactFlash card readers. Adobe Lightroom (my tool of choice for importing, sorting and doing basic image editing - more on this later in the week) detects the cards and opens up an import dialog. I choose to copy the pictures from the card to my hard drive into particular folders. I also enable the setting to convert the Canon camera raw files to .dng. Repeat for all cards with pictures on them.

Minute 37 : Begin reviewing and sorting the pictures. One of the great things about Lightroom is that I can begin sorting/editing while other pictures from the card(s) are still importing.

I always go through two stages when reviewing pictures. The first is a basic pass, marking bad photos for deletion from my hard drive. Shots that were extremely out of focus, shot in the wrong direction, etc. I then permanently delete those photos. I know that some prefer to keep them all, but I like to keep more hard drive space usage as lean as possible. Also, some like to backup the photos automatically to another hard drive at this stage. I typically wait until later in the process (this hasn’t bitten me yet - I’m half waiting for the day that my hard drive crashes right after I import and clear off my memory card… the other half is hoping it’ll never happen).

I then do another, more thorough pass, marking my photos with ratings from 1-5. I don’t often use all 5. Usually just 3’s for the okay shots and 5’s for the best. All the rest are left at 0. If I had a very large or diverse set of photos, I might use more.

If I shot landscapes or travel photos and captured the GPS locations of the photos, I attach those GPS coordinates to the photos. I do so using GPicSync. You can read more about that at a previous post here.

Minute 42 : Create a collection (collections are ways to organize photos into different areas outside the standard folder structure) for this shoot. Create sub-collections called Good and Best and Use. Display only photos with 3’s and put them in the Good collection. Display 5’s and put them in the best collection.

Minute 45 : Begin editing photos, focusing on those in the Best collection. 80% of editing happens in lightroom - adjusting white balance if needed, tonal adjustments, playing with B&W, etc. Lightroom has a great Synch function that allows transferring the adjustments from one photo very quickly to a large number of other photos.

I then bring the photos that need some additional work over to Photoshop. It is best for adjustments that apply to just part of the photo, advanced cloning or masking, etc.

Minute 55 : Output photos. Use Lightrooms output modules (Slideshow, Print and Web) as needed. Print my own on my Canon
Canon PIXMA Pro9000. When larger prints are needed, export as .jpgs or .tiff for printing at an online vendor (I like MPix). Or, if needed In some cases, post up to my blog, e-mail, post in Flickr, etc.

Minute 59 : Back up photos to an external hard drive. Also, back up the Lightroom files once a week.

Minute 60 : Sit back and enjoy the photos. Begin planning the next shoot.