I do a rename for all files to yymmdd_xxxxx.arw while the xxxxx is an increasing number. That way each filename will only be used once. They will be imported to the folder E:\pics\yyyy\yymmdd\ within a catalog called yyyy. Each year there will be a new catalogue just to avoid big (and therefore slow) catalogues.
Personally I stoped using sessions, as long as I don't share my processing with others. Instead of that I rename the folder to "E:\pics\yyyy\yymmdd-eventname\". If the event or holidays goes longer than a day I move all files in the first of all yymmdd folders.
1. Set general EXIF infos.
2. Delete all bad shots and mark all shots you want to process with an one star rating.
3. Filter all one star shots and set a good brightness, black/white point, lightness,... and also white balance if needed.
4. Process one after the other. Set tags for place (London, New Zealand, ...), people (Marie, Smiths), purpose (portrait, landscape, testshot, ...), specials (animal, night, holidays, shooting). I do the tag setting here, because there were some issues with batch taging in earlier versions but not if you set them for each file seperately.
5. JPGs are saved to E:\pics\yyyy\yymmdd\jpgs folder. Tiffs for PS-processing are in the same folder as the raw-file.
General advices:
- work with "linear response". colors/transitions are much smoother.
- Instead of contrast and clarity use white/black-point on levels as well as a luma-curve.
- if you have clipping rather lower brightness and use the HDR for shadows than lift brightness + HDR for the highlights.
- get familiar with function of the brightness on the three color wheels, the 5 points on the levels-tab (in all four colormodes). combine them with hdr, brightness, lightness, curves and contrast to get a feeling of what is possible.
- you may create your own profiles because the general and standard profiles are often good but may show some weeknesses too. I recommend dcamprof or the GUI-version lumariver of Anders Torger (see in the Colour Management section of this forum).
- after a while set up the workspace to your taste.