pkgoldberg wrote:
A fairly experienced amateur, I started shooting in RAW a few years ago and would appreciate advice on how to download and organize my files. I use Lightroom (CC) for post processing. I have been backing up entire shoot from camera card to an external drive before downloading to LR--but the reality is that I don't see much sense in keeping shots that I delete for one reason or another while processing. But going back to external drive and figuring out which to discard is troublesome and a pain in a large volume of shots. Is it wise to download from camera to LR, process, then save final products to an external drive? (To be honest, I'm not even sure where the original RAW files are stored in LR.) Advice appreciated.
A fairly experienced amateur, I started shooting i... (
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FWIW - here is my workflow for post processing images:
I insert my camera card into my card reader and review the images using FastRawViewer on my iMac to select what images are worth editing further in Lightroom.
After images have been selected in FRV, I am able to launch Lightroom from FRV which goes directly into IMPORT with the selected images already selected for import.
I import as DNG so my CR2 raw files are imported into Lightroom and converted to DNG files, meaning any edits are stored in my DNG files and in my catalog (redundancy).
Since I am only importing "keepers" into Lightroom and leaving rejects on my camera card by using FRV to review and select I save space and time.
My iMac backs up hourly to a Time Machine external disk and continually to Crashplan cloud backup, so within an hour my original images are backed up at least once, and I reformat my camera Card in camera.
Currently I have upwards of 50,000 images in my Lightroom catalog stored on an external 6tb disk, backed up on a 4tb Time Machine disk with an unlimited cloud backup in Crashplan, and monthly I connect a 2tb external drive to create a mirror backup of my images.
You can tell Lightroom where to store your images, and you should, or at least know where they are stored.
For me, I let Lightroom manage the sub folders, and I set the top folder initially.
I store all my images on an external drive, within a folder named Lightroom, within a sub folder named "pictures"
From there Lightroom stores images by date taken in sub folders named for the year-month-day.
I also rename my images on import into Lightroom, my initials, year-month-day-time (DNG -2017-06-15 12-05-30-15)
During import into Lightroom images get a few appropriate keywords, and as they are edited they are rated with a star code and receive as many keywords as possible to make locating them later a very simple and fast process.
Hope some of this helps