ightroom Workflow: Importing Photos

Earlier I explained my workflow in: Lightroom: Real Life Workflow.

My first step is always: Before importing the photos, I always copy them from the memory card to the hard drive.

My second step is always to import the photos from the hard drive in my Work-In-Process: wip catalog. see: Lightroom: How Many Catalogs?

1. I always: Copy Photos as Digital Negative (DNG) and add to catalog see: Lightroom: RAW vs. DNG for my explanation of why do I store my photos as DNG instead of keeping as original RAW photos.
2. I store my photos on the Z drive: a networked drive. In the folder photos. Then I can backup everything at once by just backing up the photos folder and its sub-folders.

3. I always rename all my photos to a sensible, easily understood and easily retrievable names: see: Lightroom: How to Set File Names. Why is mine so much better than everybody else? Because it's easily understood, not just by me, but by everybody else. It's always good to complement oneself. The file name will be: Vancouver-Streets-20090227-0001.dng. This means:

   • The photo was taken in the Vancouver Streets
   • The photo was taken on 27-Feb-2009
   • The photo is the first of that sequence
   • The photo is a Digital Negative DNG
   • When doing a directory listing, I will have all the Vancouver-Streets photos sorted in chronological order and in sequential order

4. My copyright, and my info.

5. General keywords that will apply to all of these photos. I will refine them later, adding or changing them.
6. Initial previews are always set as 1:1. Disk space is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. I just purchased Jan-2009 a couple of 1 terabyte drives for $100 Canadian each!.

33% of the work is done by doing the "correct" import.