Workflow and file organization

So I just purchased Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5 (free upgrade to CS6 when it's released) and I am trying to establish a workflow and file organization system. So if others could share their methods, I think it would help me to develop mine.

Right now I put all my RAW files in one directory with subfolders organized by date. I save final metadata files to the same folder as the RAW file. I have a separate "Gallery" folder with completed JPEGs.

I don't have solid workflow yet, but here is the order I have been using:
-Lens correction
-Crop
-White balance
-Noise reduction
-Sharpening
-Exposure & contrast (along with adjustments to highlights, shadows, blacks and whites...usually try Auto first and go from there)
-Color saturation, Clarity, and Vibrance
-Save metadata file and export to JPEG

I haven't gotten in to any more advanced editing in Photoshop yet...just been doing everything in Lightroom.

You might want to move sharpening and noise reduction further down the list. A change in exposure can mess around with noise. Everybody does it different though. I tend to adjust the mask of sharpening (hold alt key), tweak the amount, then noise reduce. Having an adjustment brush just for noise in LR4 might help in your case, but I still use an older version. Side note: Do you do anything special on import? If you always do certain things (lens correction, save jpg and raw to certain folders) you could do that on import and save some time. I used to have it separate files by ISO and have it apply certain noise reduction, but I always went back adjusted it any way, so I removed that step.

One small item worth pointing out about LightRoom is that if you are going to be using it, use it for importing all of your images so that they become catalogued. DPP and Bridge will be able to see the files imported by LR, but LR only recognizes the images that have been imported by LR.

One thing I do that has made my life easier at times is that when I go to print an image, I always create a resized copy of it with the print size in the name and the paper printed on. When I soft-proof with the profile for the paper I'm using I can make adjustments if warranted for any areas that are beyond the colour gamut of the paper and ink combination. This way I can easily print more copies later with the same edits and cropping for the aspect ratio without having to redo any work.

Would agree on moving sharpening and noise reduction to the end. Many of the other edits also affect them. If I happen to have a very high ISO shot that is nasty looking, I may reduce the noise first to see if the image is going to be usable before doing anything else with the file. After the rest of the editing process I'll revisit the noise and sharpening section for any final tweaking.

Use shooting dates for sub-folders myself. One additional step for shoots is to add the name of the event or client to the folder name to make it easier to find later. If on holidays I include the destination, if covering a marathon I include the name, etc.

One very nice thing about LightRoom, The develop module was designed to allow a generally accepted workflow from top to bottom of the adjustment panel. In other words, start at the top of the adjustment panel and work your way down. I try and stick to this and it seems to work very well. Then, if you need to make specific adjustments, "edit in" Photoshop and make desired adjustments, then simply hit the save button and the image will be saved with edits back into the lightroom catologue. Agree with the others---sharpening and NR should be one of the last things you do.

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Originally Posted by bob williams

One very nice thing about LightRoom, The develop module was designed to allow a generally accepted workflow from top to bottom of the adjustment panel. In other words, start at the top of the adjustment panel and work your way down. I try and stick to this and it seems to work very well. Then, if you need to make specific adjustments, "edit in" Photoshop and make desired adjustments, then simply hit the save button and the image will be saved with edits back into the lightroom catologue. Agree with the others---sharpening and NR should be one of the last things you do.

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I am noticing this. But why would you do lens correction at the end? Wouldn't you want to start with that?

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Originally Posted by sambisu

I am noticing this. But why would you do lens correction at the end? Wouldn't you want to start with that?

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Yes, at least I prefer to do leveling/cropping before further editing, and before that I want to apply lens correction.

Another handy thing about LR is that you actually don’t do any changes to the image while “editing”. What you do can rather be seen as creating a recipe for image generation, and this isn’t actually applied until you export an image file. When the recipe is applied, your edits are applied in "proper order" regardless of the order you made them. This means that technically the order in which you do adjustments in LR isn’t important.

However, it's also true that it could be a good idea to do the sharpening towards the end of the process: Basic edits like exposure, shadow fill, black point etc. affect image noise, and therefore you want to adjust the noise reduction setting after such edits. And since the sharpening/noise settings also affect each other, it’s a good idea to adjust them together. (The final image will look exactly the same even if you would jump to the sharpening amount slider the first thing you do, and then do the rest. Most of us just don't prefer that order.)

Has anyone else experienced problems with LR4 operating very slowly? I was having quite a bit of grief with it and I thought my computer was the problem. I kept getting 'low memory' errors when exporting jpegs, even when I shut down all other background programs. After doing some searching through other forums, I found out that the new 4.1 release candidate addresses these issues. I just installed it, and sure enough --- no more problems. Nice and fast, just like LR3 was. Plus I notice that they have improved the chromatic aberration adjustment --- it now has an eyedropper to exactly pinpoint the colour fringe you want removed. Very slick.

I just bought LR 4 this weekend to give it a try. I found using it to be very slow, since I didn't know what I was doing.:p

It is getting faster though.

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Originally Posted by Jonathan Huyer

Has anyone else experienced problems with LR4 operating very slowly? I was having quite a bit of grief with it and I thought my computer was the problem. I kept getting 'low memory' errors when exporting jpegs, even when I shut down all other background programs. After doing some searching through other forums, I found out that the new 4.1 release candidate addresses these issues. I just installed it, and sure enough --- no more problems. Nice and fast, just like LR3 was. Plus I notice that they have improved the chromatic aberration adjustment --- it now has an eyedropper to exactly pinpoint the colour fringe you want removed. Very slick.

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It can definitely be fairly memory intensive. I know with both Lightroom and Photoshop running I can definitely push the limits of my 4 GB of RAM...probably about time to add a little more.

Guess I have been lucky so far, no problems with LR4 and I haven't downloaded 4.1 yet.. To me, everything seems to work great and just as fast as LR3----

If performance is suffering it may be worthwhile to increase the cache size setting. LR stores previews on the hard drive and spools them on and off as required to avoid the need to constantly recreate them.

It is also possible to alter the amount of RAM that LR is allowed to use via another setting. When I had a 4GB machine, I found it very helpful to increase the allowable amount from the default. With the current 8GB it hasn't been a problem.

If performance is still suffering it may be time to split the catalogue to reduce the amount of data it is running. I store my photos by year_month_date. With the sheer number of photos involved I have found it necessary to catalogue by year. This is also of benefit when backing up the photos, as the catalogue for each year is placed in the folder for that year so it won't be forgotten.