Saving and Storing photos

I know this has many answers but how do you guys save and store your photos

JPeg( after any post Processing), JPeg and Raw . What sort of categrories? By Date etc etc.

I'm about to buy a separate external HD for the sole purpose and need a simple sysytem so the images can easily be found and viewed.

Howard

I leave all of them in Lightroom. I use stacks to keep the PP version(s) on top of the original. I back up my Lightroom catalog to a local hard drive daily, and also keep a full size jpeg of my 'best' stuff on Flickr.

short answer - Lightroom does it all!

longer answer - physically stored by date, but keyworded for more useful searching.

I used to manually sort things by catagory & date, but LR does it so much quicker & easier...

Do a full backup (Export Catalogue) to external Hard Disc about once a month or so. This is stored "off-site".

I use lightroom too. I tend to create directories which are a combination of date and some clue as to what it is: e.g., "New York Easter 2010". I keep the RAW, the xml sidebar file and any PSD files created by dropping into full photoshop. JPGs created as and when needed.

K.

I've corretced the typo in the title.

My file structure might look something like this:

K20D 001 Dunham Massey 07 06 2010
K20D 002 Muncaster 08 06 2010 1
K20D 003 Muncaster 08 06 2010 2
K20D 004 Muncaster 08 06 2010 3

Each folder will be an SD card full of JPEG images. I find that's enough info to find most originals.

When the images are used, then the processed version goes into an approprtae folder. Individual images are still prefixed with a number, which keeps them in the right order in the folder.

So a folder of Muncaster Castle for Web might start off containing
001 Library
002 Library 2
003 Stained Glass Window

and so on.

My eBay and EPZ folders are predicatably labelled:

EPZ 2010-01
EPZ 2010-02
EPZ 2010-03

and so on.....

so you don't shoot or save RAW images John ?

Howard

I use the date since I can look at my diary and see what job it was or where I was.

I back up onto a 1TB network drive as well as Carbonite.com.

Personally, I now only use JPEG in the studio. When you are in totally controlled conditions using RAW only increases your workload with no advantages that I can see at all.

I use PS Elements 7.0 and shoot in RAWs only (I can see a lot of benefits of using these in all conditions, but maybe it's just me being funny). When post-processed I save final JPEGs and original RAWs in the same catalogue under their original number. I know which catalogue has what theme in it, so it's easy to locate the picture. I use flickr for browsing and finding the numbers as well.
Regards,
Adrian

Ken beat me to it, but I second what he said.

In truth, it was John who led me round to this way of thinking and especially with the '+1' sharpness tip.

Let me give you an example of a recent job... 200 or so carpet samples for an online retailer, no way am I going to process 200 RAW files in exactly the same way for exactly the same result when jpegs are what are required by the client.

I don't want to divert Howard's thread so I'll start a new one on this topic in the DSLR forum.

For saving and storage I use lightroom.
I don't mind to wait when it upload photos so I use lightroom to compress the RAW files more saving around 10%.

Since most of what I shoot is from family events I don't use a special catalogue I just put everything on date.
I only have the RAW files since when I need to make them to JPG it's only two clicks away and I can adjust the settings to what's needed and I throw the JPG away when I don't need them any more so they aren't stored in the catalogue.
Only photos that get a special treatment in Photoshop I save as PSD and since Lightroom can read those Lightroom automatically grabs the edited file and place it next to the original.

It now sounds like you should process the 200 RAW files one by one but if the settings and lighting is constant like you seem to suggest you only need to process 1 RAW file.
You can then copy those settings to all the other RAW files, it's called batch processing and can be very efficient when you've a lot of the same photos.

I use Lightroom for cataloguing and editing in the following manner:

I run two identical folder structures on my HDD. One for 'negatives' and one for 'exports' called respectively ...

E:Masters
E:Finals


I subdivide by year and day and the filename is the date-image # and description of the shoot.

For example a RAW pic would be stored as:

E:Masters20102010_01_31_Womens_Naked_Aerobics2010_01_31_24535_naked aerobics.DNG

Once edited I export the pics into the 'finals' folder at 1400x1000 max jpg. For example the above picture would then be ..

E:Finals20102010_01_31_Womens_Naked_Aerobics2010_01_31_24535_naked aerobics.jpg

I run TWO Lightroom catalogues. One for RAWs and their editing and the other for the final exports. I do all my keywording and smart collections in the Finals Catalogue. LR is a lot quicker handling thousands of small jpgs than it is shovelling a lot of 15Mb RAWs around

Everything described above is backup on a 2nd HDD - I run TWO 2TB HDDs. And when I find the time burned to DVDr. I always burn two DVDr copies for safety, and have two burners to do this simultaneously.

In LR3 with it's auto-sync you don't even need to copy the settings, you select them all and any parameters changed in one pic will change in all the rest. Neat!!