… or How to Cope in the Digital Age of Photography
The workshops are over for this year unless, of course, we get yet another private client. It has been a good year, and we have been really pleased with the work our students have produced and the strides they have made in their vision, techniques, and imaging skills in the small time span of a few days.
Last week, we photographed Papa MoJo’s Roadhouse, a restaurant that often features live music. The owner, Mel Melton, a “harp” player in blues parlance, knew many people Arnie knew back in their Chicago days. The three of us also share local friends. It was definitely a case of small world showing up yet again.
We were excited to hear that Mel is going to be the lead-in act for B.B. King’s performance at the Grand Opening of the new Durham Performing Arts Center at the end of November, quite a coup! His own restaurant, complete with sound boards, is shown here. The Cajun food is wonderful! We know; we ate there after the shoot. So for those of you who live close by, keep it in mind!
Organizing & Finding your Images
Meanwhile, as many of you know, we have been talking about Digital Asset Management. The final, and perhaps most important part, is organizing them so you can find them later. We have already discussed naming conventions, but what if you want to find that shot of Great Aunt Minnie taken several years ago, but you aren’t sure exactly when … or where?
That’s easy … IF you have done your homework!
Two of the most popular cataloging programs used by pros are iView Media Pro, now taken over by Bill Gates and called Expression Media 2, and Lightroom 2.1. None of these catalogs is limitless. Expression Media 2 claims capabilities of references of up to 128,000 files per catalog, and Peter Krogh, undisputed guru of digital asset management, mentions a limit of 2GB in his forum. Lightroom 2.1 claims a maximum of up to 100,000 files, but they freely admit that the capacity also is dependent upon your computer and its capabilities. When things start to get sluggish and slow down, it is probably past time to create a new catalog, regardless of what program you use!
These programs can tell you where your images are, even if you are not connected to the folders themselves. This works, because both programs have thumbnails for each image imported.
As to the size-limitation issue, there are ways around it, although nothing is perfect.
First, and I am not suggesting that you necessarily do this, I keep only the keepers in my catalogs. For example, if I do an HDR image, I save it as a TIF and give it the same file name as the last one in the series used to create it. I don’t keep all the photos that made up that HDR image in the catalog except perhaps the one with the optimum exposure.
If I’m looking for a dock cleat on the Outer Banks, I know which folder to go to and will find the single images there, too! Similarly, if I have worked on a DNG file, that becomes a keeper. For me, I have no need to keep the “similars” in the catalog, since I know where they’ll be.
I also break down my catalogs into types: Assignments-1, Landscapes-1, Abstracts-1, and People-1, for example. If I am searching for an image of the aforementioned Great Aunt Minnie, I know she won’t be in the Landscapes or Abstracts files, unless she is abducted by aliens and is reduced to some abstract blob!
In that case, I probably won’t have a photo of her anyway! If I have used her in an assignment, however, I only have to check two catalog categories, not four or more.
As one catalog fills up — note the original names contained “-1″ — I’ll create a second one with same file name followed by “-2″.
So, I have reduced the size of the catalogs by:
- Grouping similar subjects together in their own catalog
- Keeping only the keepers in the catalog
- Paying attention to the catalogs and not letting them get to the point of being sluggish
Remember, if another image becomes a keeper, it can easily be added to the appropriate catalog later.
And most important, you have all your images, even if you choose not put them all into your catalog(s).
Expression Media 2 or Adobe Lightroom 2.1?
There are, of course, no easy answers here, but then, who thought there would be? Frankly, I am waiting for the upcoming second edition of Peter Krogh’s The DAM Book (due out in January of 2009) before I decide for sure. After all, he is the undisputed guru of digital asset management. I suspect, for several reasons, that I will continue with iView, albeit in its new guise as Expression Media 2. One should keep in mind that Media 2 is in the cataloging business, Lightroom isn’t. Meanwhile, there are similarities and differences.
Adobe has great support, and once you have bought their products, as long as they are reasonably current, Adobe supports them without additional charge. Microsoft, on the other hand, is not as helpful in the help department, and their help is, in my mind, quite expensive. I just went to their support website and typed in several phrases, none of which came up with useful answers. I don’t mind not having phone support if the website is useful, but in this case… There are other options, however, in useful forums where one can usually get information and help that is missing from software support websites.
On the plus side, Expression Media 2 has many more label colors than either Bridge or Lightroom. For me, it’s also much easier and faster to find images in Media 2. In addition, Media 2 will catalog sound, video, pdf, and other files in addition to photo files.
The star rating system is the same for all, and while done slightly differently in each program, the principle is the same in all.
Lightroom shows the images as edited, but even if you save your metadata instructions to the files, Media 2 does not see or register them.
The bottom line is to try each out and see what makes sense for you. There are trial versions for both Lightroom 2.1 and Media 2. If you are a photographer who does not produce hundreds of thousands of images, Lightroom will probably work just fine for you. For those of us who have gazillions of photo files, Media 2 may be the better choice.
The Key to Making it all Work
The key to making it all work is metadata and the descriptions and keywords you place into it. I have developed a system that has worked for me for close to 30 years. Because I never know how people are going to search for an image, I tend to be thorough in my creating descriptions and keywords. I have sold a lot of stock — as in stock photos — over the years and part of that success, I believe, was and is due to my careful labeling.
That system I set up back in film days applies to your being able to find your own images, even if you never sell one little byte.
I use two-letter country codes which I get from ISO. Yes, this is the same ISO you see that indicates film speed. It stands for International Organization for Standardization that encompasses many different areas.
In my metadata descriptions, I start at the top (country) and head to the bottom (who what, etc.) For example, a recent label reads:
USA, NC, Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Roanoke Sound, Bodie Island, abandoned house on stilts …
As you can see, it applies to both approaches to the same scene. For one, I have added “beyond grasses at sunset” and for the other, “in fog.”
Under the keywords, I listed, not necessarily in order:
Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, color, national park, national seashore, NC, North Carolina, Outer Banks, panorama, Roanoke Sound, United States, United States of America, US, USA, shack …
I think you get the picture! For many of you, this may well be overkill, but you can adapt these principles to your own needs.
Why Duplicate Your Photographs?
Time and time again, I see people duplicating their photographs, so they may essentially have two, five, even ten essentially-identical photographs, all hogging disk space.
There are several reasons I have heard for this, and I am not convinced that all the reasons are really valid in this age of updated programs.
The first makes a lot of sense to me. When one has worked extensively on an image in Photoshop, using layers and other tools not available in Lightroom 2.1, there is no choice. When you have spent a lot of time working on an image, why would you want to repeat all that effort? Similarly, when you create an HDR image using Photomatix (preferable by far over Photoshop), there is no choice. When you do a stitch (melding a string of photographs together to create a panorama), there is no choice. You have to save those images as a TIF or PSD.
With the new capabilities of Lightroom 2 and 2.1, however, I find that I do not often need to head into Photoshop for additional tweaking. I can dodge and burn, make selective adjustments in saturation, hue, and luminancce, change the color temperature, use the clone or heal tool, crop, straighten out a horizon, not to mention a host of other possibilities all in Lightroom. All those instructions go into the metadata which I carefully save to my DNG file, as discussed in an earlier installment of this article. So, I have one DNG file, rather than both DNG and TIF or PSD files.
I have already talked about treating a photograph in different ways, perhaps as a color photo as well as a couple of variations in black and white. With virtual copies, as previously discussed, I have my three variations without having to create more files, again saving on disk space. Examples of these were illustrated last week with the derelict boat hull. Here are two more examples, one from the original DNG and the other from a virtual copy that has been treated and cropped differently. Remember, that virtual copy doesn’t take up any disk space!
A third example is the case of collections. Mary may want to file her photo of Great Aunt Minnie in the parent folder she created for that shoot. She may also make a real (not virtual) copy and put it into a Family Photos folder. She may make yet another copy for a Birthday Celebrations folder. Me? If it were my Great Aunt Minnie, I do not see the need for that. First, if I work on one of the images, I would have to work on the other two to match. I don’t know about you, but adding needless time at the computer is not high on my list. I’d rather be out photographing!
A much easier solution is to create Catalog Sets in Media 2 or Collections in Lightroom. For this blog, I dragged photos of Alden, Tate, and Hayden into a Lightroom Collection called Family for Blog. If I chose, I could also drag them into another collection called Grandkids. In Media 2, I could have done the same using Catalog Sets. Remembering that the photos actually reside in their original folders, I can locate each of those photos three different ways:
- In the original folder
- In the Family for Blog collection
- In the Grandkids collection
Think of these collections as library reference cards — in this case, one book or photo referenced several different ways. I can use these collections to gather photos from different folders for a family slide show. It’s easy to do in these two programs, and I don’t have to create duplicate files to accomplish the task. In fact, I worked straight from the DNG files.
Finally, I want to create and upload to Shutterfly some 4×6 photos from our recent trip out west for family to share. In Lightroom, for example, I have already created Export presets for 4×6 photos, one for print and another for web. Once I batch create those 4×6 photos and send them off, I have no need to keep them. They are so easy to do in Lightroom, and again, directly from the DNG files. These are from a preset I have created for the blog.
As you can gather, I like to streamline and keep it as simple as possible. It goes back to the old KISS theory!
Meanwhile, if you have thoughts or questions, please type away in the comments box below. You don’t need to be a Google member to do so. Just click on the “comments” link below and post anonymously.
For more information about us and our workshops, go to our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures website, and if you are considering joining us, do as others have already done, made their room reservations for 2009!
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