About a month ago, I read a post by Thomas Hawk about his workflow, which inspired a friend of mine to blog about his own, so I started thinking about how mine has changed radically in the last few years.

The catalyst for this change is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Prior to Lightroom, my workflow consisted of:

1. Downloading my images from the cards using Downloader Pro, which allows excellent control over tags and other IPTC data, including convenient presets.
2. Using Photo Mechanic to do my initial triage, find my winners and losers, adjust tags and metadata as necessary and decide my editing strategy. (This is still the fastest photo browser I’ve ever used, even though it doesn’t come anywhere near Adobe Bridge in functionality.)
3. Using Nikon Capture NX to do my initial color and tonality work. (At the time, there was some debate about whether you could trust Camera RAW to do the right thing with respect to Nikon’s proprietary white balance, which had to be reverse engineered. Having spent a prior career in the computer industry, I knew what “reverse engineering” meant, no offense to the most excellent Adobe Photoshop engineering team, without whose product I would be nowhere.)
4. Using Adoble Photoshop to continue editing and produce the finished images in PSD format.
5. Exporting the images as JPEGs, in high and low resolution (yes, two sets), so I have “finished” versions I can show the world or deliver to clients.
6. Managing all these files manually—the initial RAW files in folders according to category, place, etc., and the corresponding PSD files and JPEG files with matching filenames, in matching folder structures. So, for example, image1.nef would have a matching image1.psd and two matching image1.jpg files in separate, identical folder trees.
7. Backing up the shoot.

Thinking back, I wonder how I ever delivered anything without getting mired in my own processes, and how I ever kept track of the images without losing any of them.

All of that changed when Adobe Photoshop Lightroom arrived. It took a while to break out of the little box that I’d made for myself and think differently about how to manage my files and workflow, but once I got it, I never looked back.

In contrast with the above, my workflow today consists of:

1. Importing my images from the card after creating or editing metadata and filename presets to match the shoot.
2. Taking a first pass through all of them and flagging all the completely useless ones (out of focus, misfires, serious motion blur, etc.) as Rejects, then hiding them using the Attributes function, so I don’t have to keep looking at them.
3. Taking a second pass to flag my edit candidates as Picks, making heavy use of the Compare View and Survey View as I need to, and flagging more Rejects as necessary. (I’ll often leave images as unflagged if I can’t decide or think I might find a use for them later.)
4. Develop the Picks in the Develop module, going from there into Photoshop as needed (for masks, brushes, etc.—things Lightroom can’t do yet).
5. Creating virtual copies to enable me to try different editing approaches and styles.
6. Creating Collections as necessary as I go along.
7. Taking a last pass through the images flagged as Picks or unflagged to see if I’ve missed anything.
8. Exporting the Picks as necessary to display or deliver to the client.
9. Backing up the shoot (before throwing away the Rejects—you just never know).

It seems like more steps, but once you get into the Lightroom philosophy, it’s a much more natural and sensible workflow. Once I got used to doing it this way and adopted it fully, my production times were cut in about half.

For me, the benefits of a Lightroom workflow are:

1. Far superior editing capabilities between Lightroom and Photoshop than I ever had with Capture NX or Photoshop alone
2. Freedom from having to manage all those files manually
3. Not having to take up disk space with a collection of matching “finished” JPEGs. I simply export finished files in whatever format I need, whenever I need them.
4. The ability to go back and try different ideas on a photo without taking up disk space with multiple copies, since all the edits are recorded in the catalogs.

A few caveats:

1. I do not convert my RAW files to the Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) file format. I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of doing this and none of them are compelling enough for me to incorporate the extra step… yet. (Now, if the Lightroom developers ever announced that they will no longer support one of my RAW formats, that would be compelling enough.)
2. I have Lightroom set to write all my changes to XMP sidecar files, so that I have the freedom to use other programs to work with the files if necessary. For this reason, I have Camera RAW set to use its own database rather than disturbing the sidecar files, so I don’t inadvertently mess up any delicate edits when I’m in there (which is rare).
3. When I first converted my old manual file management system to Lightroom, I took the time to rename all my finished PSD files to conform to the “-edit” format Lightroom uses, just to be consistent, and then I manually stacked them with the original RAW files, as I would with any new files today.

I’d be interested in hearing about your workflows. We develop them to suit our own capabilities and styles, but it’s always good to get a different perspective.