Backup, Backup, Backup

Updated March 7, 2011

OK, so I’m anal. I don’t just back up our images once, I do it in triplicate for irreplaceable files and in duplicate for other files. Yup, you heard me, at least twice, and more often, thrice. That’s four copies total of all Arnie’s and my photographs. As the old ad says, “…Because I’m worth it!”

So, why all those copies? Easy, if one or two of my external hard drives fail, we are still good to go. We’re professionals, and over the years, we’ve made too many images that we don’t want to lose.

For example, the one at the right, “Misty Islands,” has sold numerous times as a fine-art piece and hangs in

Digital Asset Management – Part IV

… or How to Cope in the Digital Age of Photography

Updated October 14, 2011

Organizing & Finding your Images

As many of you know, we have been talking about Digital Asset Management. The final, and perhaps most important part, is organizing your images 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 …

Digital Asset Management – Part III

… or How to Cope in the Digital Age of Photography

Updated October 14, 2011

It was a glorious morning on the Outer Banks as I began typing this installment of the blog. We were meeting our students at breakfast and heading down to Ocracoke, since we were supposed to get rain later in the week.

As I finished this article, adding recent shots from the Outer Banks, we had just returned from one of our favorite locations where we got some great photographs in the fog (I’ll post a couple of those next time)! As we say on our website, Mother Nature has a mind of her own, and we try to photograph her in all of her moods.

Now, back to the article!

Photoshop vs. Lightroom

I am not addressing Aperture, because that program lacks several features I consider critical, including graduated filters, limitless brush sizing, and some other things of which I am reminded in our workshops, but which I forget, since I do not use the program.

There are a couple of very big differences between Photoshop and Lightroom. Photoshop was created for graphic artists, and as such does not always intuitively meet the needs of photographers. Lightroom, on the other hand, was designed by photographers for photographers. What a concept!

Photoshop can deal with layers, photo merging (some Nikon models offer this in camera), softproofing for better results in printing, and other more sophisticated aspects of imaging. That said, the breadth of other adjustments in Lightroom exceeds that allowed in Camera Raw. Any tweaks you make in Camera Raw in Photoshop stay with the image in the metadata, but if you have more adjustments to make than Camera Raw affords, you have to