What do you do with your thousands of unused RAW files? What I mean, when you shoot, you are shooting hundreds of files, but end up using only a few. Do you just delete rest of them? Or save them in some drive, just in case, you need later?
Do you do the clean up after every shoot? every month? once a year?
Any software (e.g. LR) used to pick RAW files to save?
I am curious what everyone else doing. I am pretty bad - I have saved everything from last 5-6 years or so, but realize that it may not be a good practice.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 20, 2010 at 11:37 AM
I just use Bridge, and I go through and cull before I process any of the files. Depending on what I shot, I may only keep files that I want to process, or I may keep more in case I want to process them. But either way, I probably keep at most 1/2 of the files I shot.
Within Bridge I like to use the Review Mode to cycle through a couple of times initially and easily get rid of the definite throwaways. Then I may open some and look closer for another pass.
I scan the the film I want to process and then archive all my sheets except the real losers which I cut up and throw away. I then create a master *tiff file for each shot I want to process/print. This saves a lot of disk space because my processed images can be a gigabyte in size.
Images that I have scanned, but later decided not to process/print, get deleted. I do this about one per year. If you shoot a lot, a more frequent cleaning of the digital dust bin may be called for. Even with today's huge drives, they can fill quickly. Once a disk starts to get pretty full, you may have performance slowdowns due to seek/read/write calls to the disk.
I don't begin the cull process right away--I let things gurgle for a couple of days so that I can be more objective in my judgement of each shot. Only the best shots get scanned immediately. The "maybe's" get archived for later review.
I use ID Imager Pro V5 as my DAM application. If you're looking for a DAM app, check it out. ID Imager. Bridge is pretty good, but if you want something much more robust, ID Imager is a great choice.
--P
Posted by Luke Ormand on August 20, 2010 at 12:38 PM
I echo what David says. I use Bridge to look through my photos once I upload them and generally cull ones that are OOF, aren't what I'm looking for (I do a lot of bird photography which naturally includes birds in flight so its easy to serpate the good from the bad), obvious redundencies etc.
I try to utilize the "star" rating system in Bridge to make notes of my best photos that I want to process. This way, when I return to look at the files I know which ones are the best and can more safely delete others. I try to organize once a month but it never happens that way... I think the best way to do it is let things build up for a while and then go through instead of doing it piece meal.
- Luke
Posted by John Mumaw on August 20, 2010 at 5:53 PM
I'll double echo what David and Luke say. I use the Bridge in PS (don't need Lightroom) and it works out well.
Posted by Richard Ditch on August 20, 2010 at 8:07 PM
I do my editing immediately after importing my raw files to my Mac. I first look at the images with Nikon ViewNX - it launches as soon as Nikon Transfer completes importing from the CF card. Anything lacking critical focus is trashed at this stage (unless it is a documentation of an extreme rarity). Then all the bird shots with bad head position, etc.
Then everything that has survived the initial edit goes through a more critical review where sharpness is confirmed at 100% view.
Remaining images are then named and numbered by species.
Raw files are then duplicated to an external firewire drive plus a copy is burned to a CD.
Only then do I begin work on any file in Photoshop.
Posted by Jim DeWitt on August 20, 2010 at 8:57 PM
My process is something like Richard's, but because I use Apple's Aperture I have Aperture make an archive and then work inside Aperture, which doesn't alter the master RAW files. Deleting a file in Aperture is a two step process (move to Trash and then Empty Trash) so it's a bit harder to make dumb mistakes.
In the field, I use a laptop and an external USB drive, but otherwise the process is the same. When I get home, I merge the culled laptop Aperture library with my master library.
Posted by Bill Brennan on August 28, 2010 at 9:27 PM
I use Aperture for the RAW files and Photoshop CS4 for final optimization. The culling process includes rating images (1-5) that are not an initial toss-out. The few that are considered potential exhibition quality are edited and saved as Tiffs. The remainder are evaluated again at a later date for further culling.
The process is not a production with deadlines but rather a leisurely process so that it is fun and not work.
Another thought for you to consider: Are you causing yourself a logjam because you are shooting too many images; would a more contemplative approach help you ease your processing burden?
Discussion
7 repliesWhat do you do with your thousands of unused RAW files? What I mean, when you shoot, you are shooting hundreds of files, but end up using only a few. Do you just delete rest of them? Or save them in some drive, just in case, you need later?
Do you do the clean up after every shoot? every month? once a year?
Any software (e.g. LR) used to pick RAW files to save?
I am curious what everyone else doing. I am pretty bad - I have saved everything from last 5-6 years or so, but realize that it may not be a good practice.
Within Bridge I like to use the Review Mode to cycle through a couple of times initially and easily get rid of the definite throwaways. Then I may open some and look closer for another pass.
Images that I have scanned, but later decided not to process/print, get deleted. I do this about one per year. If you shoot a lot, a more frequent cleaning of the digital dust bin may be called for. Even with today's huge drives, they can fill quickly. Once a disk starts to get pretty full, you may have performance slowdowns due to seek/read/write calls to the disk.
I don't begin the cull process right away--I let things gurgle for a couple of days so that I can be more objective in my judgement of each shot. Only the best shots get scanned immediately. The "maybe's" get archived for later review.
I use ID Imager Pro V5 as my DAM application. If you're looking for a DAM app, check it out. ID Imager. Bridge is pretty good, but if you want something much more robust, ID Imager is a great choice.
--P
I try to utilize the "star" rating system in Bridge to make notes of my best photos that I want to process. This way, when I return to look at the files I know which ones are the best and can more safely delete others. I try to organize once a month but it never happens that way... I think the best way to do it is let things build up for a while and then go through instead of doing it piece meal.
- Luke
Then everything that has survived the initial edit goes through a more critical review where sharpness is confirmed at 100% view.
Remaining images are then named and numbered by species.
Raw files are then duplicated to an external firewire drive plus a copy is burned to a CD.
Only then do I begin work on any file in Photoshop.
In the field, I use a laptop and an external USB drive, but otherwise the process is the same. When I get home, I merge the culled laptop Aperture library with my master library.
The process is not a production with deadlines but rather a leisurely process so that it is fun and not work.
Another thought for you to consider: Are you causing yourself a logjam because you are shooting too many images; would a more contemplative approach help you ease your processing burden?
Bill Brennan