Photographic workflow is a massive subject and is probably the hardest thing for new photographers to get right as they take more and more images, and as they get deeper into post-processing those files. It is so easy to shot in rapid-fire these days, and there’s no added cost to creating more photographic files, so getting the whole workflow thing nailed is very important.

Fortunately there are some really great pieces of software such as Adobe Lightroom (Windows or Mac) and Apple Aperture (Mac only) out there that help to make life easier and workflow faster.

I get asked about this all the time so I thought I would share my workflow here. By no means would I ever say that this is the best or most efficient workflow; rather, it’s just what I do. It work well very me and it is actually possible to go through hundreds of images pretty quickly.

1. Download all files from memory cards to the computer using Breeze Downloader Pro. The software automatically applies metdata including my name, address, copyright info, and a few keywords about me. It also creates date based folders on my computer that fits into my existing storage hierarchy, and it renames every file so that I will never ever have images with duplicate file names. Note that this is a real possibility as most cameras only go as high as 10,000 images before reusing old file names.
2. Import all the images into Lightroom. I automatically apply a preset with a few develop settings that I’ve found to be a good starting point for my images. The applied preset is specific to the camera that was used to make the images.
3. First pass review of the images. I mark all the bad ones (out of focus, massively over or underexposed, or just plain ugly or boring images) for deletion, and also mark some of the very best as “Picks”.
4. Second pass review. Very similar to the first pass, only this time I do some minor image adjustments (Cropping, White Balance, Exposure, and Contrast) to see if marginal images can be improved or if I should just delete them. At this point I also use the color flags in Lightroom to mark images for upload to my various websites, online galleries, and stock agencies. I also use the Lightroom Stacking feature to group images that were shot in a set for processing as HDR or Panoramic images later.
5. Add additional metadata to all the remaining images. Includes generic keywords for all images about the shoot, the location, the weather conditions, and anything else that might apply to every image in the folder. I also apply specific keywords to individual images about the subject matter, people, and places involved so that I can easily find the images later.
6. Add a Title and a Caption to every image. For the images marked earlier as “Picks” or with color flags these titles and captions will be very specific with lots of detail. For the other images the title and caption will be very generic, and may be identical for many images.
7. Every image that will be uploaded or printed will then get additional processing. Final edits to Cropping, White Balance, Exposure, Sharpening, Saturation, and Vignetting. At this point I will also remove dust spots and do any local editing to smaller areas of some images. I will also play with some images to see if they look better in Black and White or with some added special effects. I don’t do a lot of this, but Lightroom makes it extremely fast and easy, and most of the time edits to one image can be very quickly and easily applied to a whole series of images that were shot under the same conditions.
8. At this point I will process any images that will be merged as HDR or as Panoramic images. I do lots of both of these, but I use automated tools to do most of the work that make this process very simple. These processes can be time consuming, but for the most part I set them up in batches and walk away while the computer does the work. Any merged HDR or Pano images will also need another pass of editing similar to step 7 to finalize them.
9. Upload to my online galleries. Post to Twitter, Facebook, or my Blog. Upload images to stock agencies for sale.
10. Backup everything. This is automated and happens overnight.
11. Backup everything in 3 more places. This is automated and happens gradually over the following two weeks.

That’s just about it. This probably sounds like a lot of work, but honestly Lightroom makes it fast and easy. I can go through a batch of 100 images in under an hour. And it scales up easily too. I’ve done 1000 images in under two hours before. There are always individual images that that may need additional work, or images that I really like that I may go back to and revisit from time to time, but this is the main part of my workflow.

What do you think? How is your workflow different? What do you see here that I could improve?