Continuing with the digital work-flow series, lets look at how to edit your images, or at least how I do. Many people misunderstand the work edit and confuse it with the word process, so let me try to clear this up for you.

To edit, according to the Oxford English dictionary is to ´remove unnecessary or inappropriate material´ in terms of photography this means deleting images from a collection that or not worth keeping. To process on the other hand is ´a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end´. Therefore we edit a collection down to the keepers and process (or develop) the individual images

to a particular need, changes to contrast, saturation etc. I think that’s cleared that up, lets move on.

So what is the best way to edit a shoot in Lightroom? I use starsevery image has a star or is rejected and deleted. But firstly I recommend you set up a smart collection from the library view by clicking on the plus (+) symbol next to the collections tab on the left. Call it ´TO EDIT´ and match all of the following instructions.

Rating… is less than or equal to… – - – - – .

AND

Pick Flag… is not… rejected.

Click save. This means everything in that collection has not yet been edited.

now by viewing this collection one image at a time in full screen (shortcut ´e´) I can very quickly rate it (by pressing 1,2,3,4 or 5) or reject it by pressing ´x´once this value is assigned the image is removed from the collection and the next image is automatically displayed, so editing a large batch doesn’t really take that long.

The number system I use is roughly as follows

• 1 star images – Good enough to keep but not great, also duplicates.
• 2 star images – Images that could be worth a second look.
• 3 star images – Images to be processed.
• 4 star images – Processed images.
• 5 star images – Images in use – with a client or on website.

If I find myself unsure between 2 almost identical images as to which is the stronger Lightroom has a great feature called compare (shortcut ´c´) that will compare 2 images side by side and allow me to make my rating that way instead.

Lightroom 4 has recently been announced as a beta version

Before I get into this Lightroom 4 has recently been announced as a beta version, which means it´s a free download to test the product before it become a finished product. So before rushing off to download it just bare in mind that it´s not a completed product and there will be bugs and things not working as they should, so don´t rely heavily upon it until it has been completely tested. I know people who have lost masses of work by updating their library to a beta product and faced all sorts of problems, just saying.

So continuing with my digital work-flow series, lets look at how I get my images from my CF card onto a hard drive. There are numerous software solutions to help you do this from your computers operating system (Windows, Mac OS) where you can simply drag and drop, to much more complex database systems, such as Lightroom, that allow you much more in the way of advanced features. It may sound trivial to you but the advanced import features in Lightroom is one if the main reasons I use it. Now I´m not saying this solution is for everyone but I work like this.

Connect my CF card via a card reader, although you can connect a cable directly to your camera it does tend to be slower and drain the cameras battery, so it´s better not to, but it´s a nice feature that can save you a big headache if your card reader breaks, as mine did recently.

Rename file. You can rename them as you think best, I personally use the following format

Just from seeing a list of these filenames I can tell where and when they were shot as well as the order in which the images where shot

Note:
Importing images is for me the most nerve racking of times as, until the process is completed, the images only exist in one location, on the memory card. While memory cards are a very reliable storage medium, there is only one copy, so be very careful what you do with it.

Having a decent digital work-flow (or is it workflow or work flow?) is essential to the working photographer, but what actually is a digital work-flow? Chances are you have one even if you’ve never really thought about it. Basically a digital work-flow is the steps your images go through from the moment they are created in camera (or from a scan). Important steps to be considered when it comes to a digital work-flow include:

• Bring the images into your computer
• Add metadata to these images
• Reject, Rate and label all images
• Initial image corrections
• Put images onto collections Process images for specific needs
• Create backups

My personal work-flow revolves heavily around Adobe Lightroom 3, but every photographer will have a slightly different approach to their own work-flow and there are several different schools of thought as to which is the best practice, ultimately you need to have a work-flow that meets your needs and that you can maintain. I´ll be covering this in more detail over the next couple of days, so stick around.