Digital Workflow
by Mike Lane FRPS

I was a late comer to digital photography. Many friends had gone through several generations of digital camera bodies before I got started. So I thought I would seek their advice about a digital workflow. I wanted to know how were they handling the large number of digital pictures they were taking? What filing system were they employing and how did they edit, caption, convert and back up their images?

The response was very disappointing. No one impressed me with their organisation of files, editing was often neglected, file renaming not considered and no one was backing up their data securely. Friends I visited were in a mess. Hard drives were bulging with pictures in no particular order and piles of un-catalogued CD’s stretched up towards the ceiling. Their digital workflow was non-existent.

With a computer background and an organised nature a good digital workflow was essential to me. I had seen how not to do it, now I had to find a better way.

My first rule is never to have a single copy of any picture. On a trip I first download to my Sony laptop and secondly to a small storage device. I use the Epson 4000 (40 Gb hard drive), which has a very high quality screen, but there are much cheaper screenless units available, such as the Digimate range. Having a screen is not essential if the device is only used to backup, rather than view and edit.

I am amazed how many people are going on trips with just one storage device when they would not consider going with just one camera. A hard drive is the least reliable part of any computer system, so a second totally independent unit is essential. Relying upon one device to store valuable pictures is too risky.  A friend recently returned from a trip to discover he could not read any files on one of his storage devices. Wisely he had backed up everything to a second. It was a nervous time until his pictures were safely copied onto his desktop. An earlier laptop of mine had twice failed on me abroad when it refused to boot. Without my Epson 4000 I would not have been able to download my flash cards.  Today I have a more reliable laptop, but they are not the perfect answer for everyone. As well as being a heavy addition to ones luggage laptops are very antisocial. If you are used to travelling with a group and enjoy an evening gathering in the bar after a days photography, laptops can kill the conversation. Everybody sits around with heads buried into their screens rather than talking to each other. I travel alone most of the time and enjoy editing my pictures of an evening, but when with a group I leave my laptop in the bedroom when heading for the bar or restaurant. Two small storage units might be a better answer than a laptop for many.

When working from home I still make two copies of my pictures. First I download to a folder on my hard disk called ‘Incoming Pictures’, which is further subdivided to hold pictures from each shoot. The folder ‘Incoming Pictures’ is then automatically backed up to another hard drive using a simple and cheap program called ‘Handy Backups’.  Handy Backups can be started manually or will automatically run to a set schedule, perhaps once a day. I run it as an incremental backup, which means it only copies new or altered files. If a file has been previously backed up it will not be redone. Only when the two copies are secured do I begin a first edit. 

Camera manufacturers supply their own software for viewing and editing Raw files, but there are many independent programs that are worth looking at. Using a search engine on the internet type in ‘Raw image conversion software’ and it will list many choices. One thing all these programs have in common is a free trial period, which usually runs for between 14 to 30 days so you can trial them without cost.

Here are some of the better known ones which are well worth trying.

• Bibblelabs   www.bibblelabs.com
• Breezebrowser Pro v1.3   www.breezesys.com
• ACDsee   www.acdsee.com
• Rawshooter   http://www.pixmantec.com/  
• Capture one LE and Pro versions   www.phaseone.com
• Profotosoftware   www.profotosoftware.com

My clear favourite is Breezebrowser Pro v1.7, but it is only suitable for PC computers.  Most of the others work with a variety of camera makes and run on PC or Mac machines.  Breezebrowser's strength is its speed and intuitiveness. Thumbnails are formed in seconds and moving from one full sized picture to the next almost instant, even with large 100Mb Tiff files, let alone smaller Raws. The interface with the user is simple and the icons obvious and meaningful. I have never had to read the manual.   It has a wonderful feature for comparing nearly identical pictures. Four images can be quickly displayed on the screen at the same time and they all zoom in and scroll simultaneously. Inevitably one is slightly sharper or better than the others. I used to compare one slide against another on a lightbox with a loupe, now I can do the same with digital images. Other program designers are starting to copy this feature, but Breezebrowser does it quicker and smoother.  Breezebrowser is one of the few Raw conversion programs that views Tiff and Jpeg files as well as Raws, which is a very important part of the digital workflow. I use Breezebrowser to copy or move my finished files to their ultimate destinations. I think the other program designers have made a big error in not allowing this. For Canon users I would highly recommend Breezebrowser. For other camera makes Rawshooter Pro and Bibblelabs were my second favourites.

My first edit is very fast, just getting rid of the absolute rubbish. I turn off all the confirmation messages asking if I really want to delete this file. Otherwise this requires an extra key press per picture. If I delete a picture by mistake the file is backed up as well as being in the Recycle bin where it can be quickly recovered. Turning off confirmation messages is an option usually found in the preference settings of most programs.

After the first edit I rename the Raw files with my own naming convention. I can see no point in retaining the file name the camera creates, although others photographers commonly do so. Breezebrowser and most of the other programs make renaming pictures in batch mode easy. If I highlight all my green woodpeckers Breezebrowser will rename them all as ‘Green woodpecker 6nnnn’. The 6 represents the current year and the next 4 digits are automatically put in by Breezebrowser, sequentially starting at 0001. It remembers the number it used last time and continues from there. It is very simple and quick. Highlight 100 pictures and it will rename them all in a second. Any Tiffs or Jpeg files generated from these Raw images retain the same name.  The advantage of renaming at this early stage is all the species within a folder will now be together alphabetically, making for easier comparison. Despite having been renamed I will be deleting more of them yet.

While renaming I also keyword my Raw files, also in batch mode within Breezebrowser. This means putting information such as the scientific name, gender, location, description, my name and telephone number into the file IPTC data. It is just as quick to do 100 pictures at a time as one and the information also remains in the file when converted to a Tiff or Jpeg. So although I may still delete some of them I am not wasting time and it prevents me forgetting to do it later.

I will then do a second edit, comparing images against each other and trying not to keep similar pictures. This is difficult stage and takes a lot of effort to delete pictures that really have nothing wrong with them. It requires a lot of will power, but there is simply no point in filling my hard disks with similar images.

Once completed I can start to think about converting the Raw images to Tiff files. Every picture I keep is converted as it will be sent out to a picture library somewhere within a few weeks, but most people only need to convert their very best. By necessity of speed I also do the Raw conversion in batch mode.

I have heard many claims that one Raw converter program produces better pictures than others and each has its fans and detractors. As with most things in photography testing for my own satisfaction was the only answer.  I did tests between Photoshop CS, Breezebrowser, Bibblelabs and Capture One, converting the same picture in each program and comparing the results carefully. I satisfied myself that there was nothing in it. Get the settings right and all are perfectly capable of producing first class results. I now do all my Raw converting in Breezebrowser and if I have the exposure right can do a whole folder at once. Any that are slightly over or under exposed I do separately and make the appropriate adjustments in the settings. 

The Tiff files have to be de-dusted in Photoshop and I usually do a final tweak in either Levels or Highlight/Shadow control. This is one of the most time consuming processes of all and I really appreciate the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop CS2. It speeds the job up a lot by dispensing the need to ALT click on a nearby area.  The real answer however lies in keeping the sensor clean. Canon and Nikon advocate sending the camera to them for cleaning, but that is not practical when it needs doing every couple of weeks. Other camera manufacturers recommend the use of cleaning fluid and swabs. I was a bit nervous of doing this at first, especially as their use negates the Canon guarantee. However after watching someone else perform the procedure I am now a regular swabber. So far no harm has been done and it makes a huge difference to the amount of de-dusting I have to do later. The downside is the swabs cost about £3 each and can only be used once. Warehouse Express is the main supplier of both swabs and cleaning fluid.

Once clean I file my pictures away. I currently have 4 internal 300Gb hard drives and 6 external USB drives of various capacities upto 500Gb. My pictures all go onto one master picture disk where I only keep my finished images. How pictures are filed depends very much on needs. If they do not need to be found quickly it need not be very complicated. In fact the same system that was used to file slides can be replicated on the computer. Pictures from a trip to Tanzania could be filed in a folder called ‘Tanzania’, which could be sub-divided into birds and mammals.  Personally I have always filed my slides alphabetically by species, so I have done the same with my digital images. The master picture disk is divided into folders for each species. Actually there are two folders for each species, one for the Raw file and the other for the Tiff.

Backing up my digital images is the final stage and one I put a lot of effort into. In the computer industry security of data is taken very seriously with daily backups stored in fireproof safes at different geographical locations. Home computer users however have traditionally been very lax about backing up. Serious digital photographers need to get away from the home computer attitude and give it the attention it deserves.

Using Handy Backups I keep two copies of my master disk on external 500Gb Lacie drives. Again Handy Backups is set to only backup new or altered files and is scheduled to run automatically every day. It runs in the background without me even knowing it is happening.

Like most computer hardware disk drives are getting cheaper by the day. I paid £199 each for my 500Gb Lacie drives and in the next year disk drives will get even cheaper and greatly increase in capacity. We will soon be seeing internal disk drives measured in Terrabytes (1000Gb).  Of the two Lacie drives one is kept at home and the other at a friends house. I swop them weekly so that they are both fairly up to date. Keeping a copy elsewhere is vital. In the next year are or so we are all going to know someone who has lost all of their digital images in one go. This will be from a computer virus, disk crash or theft. A computer system is a prime target to a burglar and when he calls he takes all your images too. This never happened with slides, but it will with digital. It is going to happen to someone soon and I am trying to make sure it is not me. I only know one other photographer who is taking this precaution, but suspect many more will do so once it has happened to someone they know.

One other piece of software that completes my digital workflow is ACDsee version 8. It is a digital photo manager and the interface is very simple for such a complicated program. I tried out the free trial download and was immediately hooked. It provides a convenient method of viewing and selecting pictures and recording those chosen to be sent out. I use it to maintain a comprehensive record of images that I have sent to publishers, picture libraries, competitions or exhibitions. I can view the images by folders, calendar or organisation. The calendar option is particularly useful allowing the viewing of all pictures taken in one year or month or day or even hour. You could even restrict it to viewing all pictures of one species taken in one year. The options are extensive.  ACDsee will also keep a track of which files are stored on DVD’s too, although personally I have no faith in the archival abilities of discs and only use them to send pictures through the post. In years to come if you think you will be able to read old DVD’s on your next DVD drive you are a lot more optimistic than me. 

One of the many pleasing advantages of digital photography is that my workflow is now so efficient I am constantly right up to date with my picture editing, whereas I was usually running about a year behind with my slides.  I was lucky in being more computer literate than most - for many it is a game of constantly catching up. 

The time to get organised with your digital pictures is right now!