- Plug my Fuji F31fd in via USB
- Fight with Windows Explorer to actually get it to display some thumbnails from the camera. What was wrong with just showing cameras as mass storage devices?
- Drag and drop photos from trip into new folder on my HDD
- Browse through photos using the fullscreen view in IfranView
- Cull any rubbish, duplicates etc. Manually eyeball “highlights” that I want to upload to Flickr
- Open up Flickr Upload
- Drag my chosen “highlights” from Explorer window into Flickr Uploader
- Re-order, rotate and add to sets where appropriate
- Hit upload – wait a while…
- Browse photos on flickr adding metadata where appropriate and cropping/adjusting using Picnik
- Sit back and admire the Set view on Flickr
- Run SyncToy to mirror my photos to a second HDD
Pretty clunky I know.
What I really want is a way of tweaking my photos online and getting those changes mirrored back locally. Slightly hampered by the fact that my local photos are on my desktop PC, which gets turned on monthly at the moment. Ideally I would have all my photos on some kind of NAS which I could then edit and upload from via my imaginary Macbook Pro and access the NAS remotely from work, pub etc. Oh and NAS should backup into the cloud. For free.
How does this compare to your workflow dear readers?
My workflow:
1. Import photos from memory card (never camera – kills battery) to Aperture, using auto-stack (x photos in y seconds = stack)
2. Rate and cull (0 stars = keep, 1 star = maybe post, 2 stars = definitely post, 3 stars = standout, bin if out of focus / horribly exposed /etc)
3. Tag photos using Aperture keywords interface
4. Using fullscreen mode, tweak exposure, rotation, cropping, colour in that order. Touch up dust specks if needed.
5. Select photos for upload and feed them to FlickrExport for Aperture. Choose titles, sets, privacy etc. Upload.
6. Back up Aperture library to an Aperture Vault on external drive.
7. Local Aperture library gets backed up by Time Machine a few times a day.
I’ve experimented with keeping my photos on a NAS but the latency tends to make actually DOING things with them quite painful. Local storage FTW, generally.
I think we’re still a way off cloud storage being practical for multi-GB collections of photos (free? hah!) but NetGear are working on something for their ReadyNAS line…
El Yak - March 17th, 2010 @ 10:49 pmThis is Zack Arias: http://www.zarias.com
He is your new friend, as he has posted up HIS workflow here:
http://www.zarias.com/workflow-photo-mechanic-to-lightroom-to-photoshop-to-delivery/… See more
In it, he demonstrates his use of Photo Mechanic, and it does exactly what you want.
Enjoy 🙂
John Burrows - March 18th, 2010 @ 2:53 pm1 – Connect camera, open Aperture and hit import
Bradlay Law - March 18th, 2010 @ 6:09 pm2 – Go through each photo, touching up/naming/exporting ones I want
3 – Open FlickrUploader
4 – Drag photos onto FlickrUploader and add tags/descriptions/whatever
5 – Hit upload
6 – Aperture Library gets backed up to external drive by timemachine via FW800 when ever I remember to connect it
7 – Profit