Inspired by this old post by my old friend Eirik Solheim (great photographer and new media guru by the way), I’ll try to describe how I deal with my photography, and hopefully improve the way I work along the way…….

My workflow goes something like this: Shoot, import directly from the camera into a folder which is spesified as date(year, month, day) and a description or name of the contents. Tagging has not really become a part of it yet, though I know I probably should. As all my photos are shot in RAW, I go through everything in Adobe Bridge, where I do get a general idea of what images I would like to do anything about. Those images are then opened up in Photoshop where I do more or less all of the adjustments. The new RAW-converter is in my opinion way better than the one in CS2, and if you put a little time into it, you can really see the power in it. When the RAW-conversion is over, it’s all about finishing those last few details, or making greater adjustments according to the use of the photos.

I am also waiting for that new fullframe weathersealed rumour, but I don’t think I really need 21mpx. And I just bought a EF 24-105L last night, so I need to start saving.

Thanks for a lot of interesting blogposts. Loved your coverage of IFA.
Andreas

On the road I’m transferring the images to the laptop and immediately throws a backup on an external disk as well. That’s the one that goes into the safe in the hotel room. It will only be a backup of my images, not the complete Lightroom catalog with tags etc. Unless I feel I’ve done enough work worth another backup.

So, I work on my images while traveling. Tagging. Editing. When I return back home I export everything to a separate catalog from Lightroom on the laptop. That catalog will include images, edits, metadata and preview files.

This catalog is then imported into my main library using my iMac. At this point I loose any more edits I do on my laptop. I’m not constantly syncing the two computers. The iMac is the main library with all my images. The laptop is only a temporary stay.

2. how do you configure your RAID setup at home ? (maybe a link to a setup page online ?)

I’m using SoftRaid to mirror two and two full disks. Meaning that if I add 1 TB to the system I buy 2 drives, one TB each. Connect them both through FW800 and use SoftRaid to initialize them and set them up as mirrored RAID. You find SoftRaid here: http://www.softraid.com/ – The setup in SoftRaid is very graphical and intuitive. That’s why I like SoftRaid in favor of Apples built in RAID.

3. what do you use for running a server system on that broken MBP (I also have one with a broken screen : Mac OSX Server ? What’s the setup there ? (I upload to Flickr, and got myself an AppleTV to display the pix on my TV)

I’m simply running Mac OS 10.5 with shared drives. I have considered OSX server because (as far as I understand) that would give me full spotlight search of all the shared drives. I’ve connected an EyeTV 610 digital cable tuner to add the PVR functionality and a Turbo.264 to speed up encoding.

4. do you use any optical correction software such as http://www.dxo.com ? I’m liking them a lot. But I need help with the automatic setup of the workflow :
RAW files > dxo for automatic treatment > aperture for cropping/tagging/etc. > storage

I’ve played around with DxO and it works great. But it adds a level of complexity and I ended up managing my needs with Lightroom lens correction and Photoshop. I hope Adobe would buy DxO and make it an integrated part of Lightroom.

5. any good comparison analysis available between lightroom and aperture ? of available plugins for each, etc. or even on how to share libraries or folders between the 2 programs ?
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/02/special_event_aperture_vs_ligh.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/02/a_comparison_adobe_lightroom_v.html
http://testmac.net/aperture-2-vs-lightroom-2-beta/
http://www.f1point0.com/2008/04/07/dodge-and-burn-lightroom-2-beta-vs-aperture-21/

- how do you manage the transfer from your laptop projects to your external disks (I use Aperture), if you’ve worked on them on the road. can any of these programs (assuming Lightroom here) manage different projects easily or do you need to reimport everything, etc.

- how do you configure your RAID setup at home ? (maybe a link to a setup page online ?)

- what do you use for running a server system on that broken MBP (I also have one with a broken screen : Mac OSX Server ? What’s the setup there ? (I upload to Flickr, and got myself an AppleTV to display the pix on my TV)

- do you use any optical correction software such as http://www.dxo.com ? I’m liking them a lot. But I need help with the automatic setup of the workflow :
RAW files > dxo for automatic treatment > aperture for cropping/tagging/etc. > storage

- any good comparison analysis available between lightroom and aperture ? of available plugins for each, etc. or even on how to share libraries or folders between the 2 programs ?

Thanks.