Managing Photos for Photographer

[simonsharayha]

Hello, not sure if this is the right place to post this form but since most photographers use lightroom I thought it would be the right place.

My question is how to manage your photo shoots from adding the photos from the SD card to delivering the photos to the client. What do you think is the best structure for that?

What I do is; I add the photos to my computer throughout lightroom to the External Hard Disk as RAW, then I export all the photos as JPEG's on the same folder of the photoshoot and send them to the client to review and choose from, then I go back to the RAW files and work on the chosen ones (through Lightroom or/and Photoshop) then i export them as JPEG's again with the retouch I made.

My folders structure would be like this:

/Photoshoot-name
     >/RAW (has all the RAW images)
     >/JPEG (has all the JPEG photos converted from the RAW)    >/Chosen (has the JPEG image chosen from the client)

do you recommend a better way? or i'm doing it right? what about the backups? should I back up only RAW's and the catalog for lightroom?

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

Sounds, Looks, good to me.

Whatever works for you is the way you should do it.

[99jon]

You have a workflow that works.

I always backup the catalog after editing, or changing metadata, each time I quit Lightroom. If I am just browsing or exporting files I simply skip backup.

I only backup raw files as a fresh jpeg can be rendered at any time. But you could archive the “chosen” jpegs to an external drive if you need a permanent record of what has been delivered to the client.

[simonsharayha]

Where do you save your Raw photos? on the computer or external ?

[Just Shoot Me]

If you are using a USB 3 type external it really doesn't matter where they are stored, Internal or External. That is unless you have a SSD inside your computer.

But in any even the actual image files are never really touched by LR even when you are editing them unless you have the option to Auto Write changes to XMP then a small XMP file is written to that drive and updated as you edit the images. So the only time the drive where the images are stored gets accessed is when you are copying image to it during the import process and if you export to the same folder the exported file get saved to that drive/folder.

[simonsharayha]

If you are using a USB 3 type external it really doesn't matter where they are stored, Internal or External. That is unless you have a SSD inside your computer.

But in any even the actual image files are never really touched by LR even when you are editing them unless you have the option to Auto Write changes to XMP then a small XMP file is written to that drive and updated as you edit the images. So the only time the drive where the images are stored gets accessed is when you are copying image to it during the import process and if you export to the same folder the exported file get saved to that drive/folder.

So the XMP saves my edit I made on RAW? that's nice! does it save on every local folder i do edits at? or a general XMP file that saves all my edits?

[dj_paige]

simons17353190  wrote

So the XMP saves my edit I made on RAW? that's nice! does it save on every local folder i do edits at? or a general XMP file that saves all my edits?

No, the XMP is not even created by default by Lightroom. Your edits are automatically saved in the Lightroom catalog, you can't turn this off.

You can optionally create XMP files for your original RAW, which contains your edits and most (but not all) user-supplied metadata. These are not used by Lightroom. These would be stored in the same folder as your RAW photos, one for each RAW photo.

If I were you, I would not plan on using the edits in XMP for any particular purpose, other than as an emergency partial backup (and you need to make regular backups of your catalog file and images).

[simonsharayha]

Thanks alot!

[99jon]

I keep Raw photos in Lr Classic on an external drive but I don't need the chosen jpegs in the LR Catalog. So I would export them to, and keep them in a separate folder.