Is there a perfect photography workflow ?

Workflow is a new buzz word that appears everywhere from making cars to mowing your lawn. Photographers also love to talk about their perfect photography workflow and how their workflow is more efficient than another workflow. In this article I want to take a step back and look at what a perfect photography workflow

What is a workflow anyway?

In general, the term workflow has to do with the “flow” of “work” or in other words the steps necessary to make a product or arrive at a desired end. The manufacturing industry uses terms like production workflow or production process. In document intensive industries like insurance and banking, there is a documentation workflow. Normally, these “workflows” are very complex and they require quite a few people to be involved in their creation. Also, these complex workflows need to be constantly scrutinized for potential bottlenecks and improvements.

When designing a workflow, people that know the particular business inside out will try to define and describe each step in the workflow. Then, once the large steps have been described, each step is broken down into smaller steps. The process of further defining smaller and smaller step continues until the desired granularity is achieved. Usually the process stops when one individual can perform a reasonable number of the steps in the process.

A photography workflow

The process for getting your photos from your digital camera to your computer, editing them, printing or publishing them can be a very complex process as well. So the term workflow can also be applied to managing your digital photos as well. Actually Digital Asset Management and Photography Workflow are synonymous terms…they both refer to the process of managing your digital pictures from creating to storage and retrieval. As with every workflow, any perfect photography workflow must contain certain important steps.

5 basic steps in a perfect photography workflow

1. Shoot the pictures – this is where everything starts.
2. Transfer the pictures to the computer. There might be an intermediary storage device if you’re shooting lots of pictures in the field.
3. Organize the pictures on the computer – this includes renaming pictures, creating folders and applying keywords.
4. Retrieve and find pictures. Everything above will influence this step.
5. Export the pictures. This step can include multiple steps or functions: backup pictures, email pictures, print pictures and other ways to use your picture collection. This is where you’re using your pictures by exporting them in different formats for different purposes.

I call my perfect photography work low STORE. Once you have these steps down then you can use your organized photo collection to print pictures, publish to the web and e-mail photos. All these extra steps depend completely on creating and organizing your digital photo collection. So, in order for you to produce outputs (prints, e-mails, etc) from your digital photos you must first have that collection of pictures organized in such a way that you can use it in multiple ways…but that’s obvious.

I know that this is a simplistic look at a perfect photography workflow, but I believe they are most common for all photographers. Weather you’re a die-hard photographer or a beginner in photography, you have your own photography workflow. Whether you perform all the steps above or just the first two or three, you still have your own photography workflow.

Where’s the perfect photography workflow?

Well…there is no perfect photography workflow…at least that’s what I think. While these steps are generic for all photographers it is obvious to me that photographers have different purposes and requirements so each has to tailor their photography workflow for what they need. The important thing to remember about any workflow is that it can improved by improving each step in particular and by improving the connection between the individual steps. The question for you is: are you looking at your workflow in order to improve it? Or are you just concerned about taking great pictures and don’t care about the rest? So, in the end, it’s all about you and your goals.

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 50% until Nov 8th) or ACDSee Photo Studio Professional for Windows (new version) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Personal Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos

Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!

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