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Author Topic: So you finally have your final print and it's beautiful....now what do you do???  (Read 3124 times)

Laminarman

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This is a workflow question.  You have your image, you've got it printed out beautifully and it's exhibition quality.  Let's say it was printed out of Lightroom.  It has all of it's edits.  It's glorious.  Now what do you do as far as archiving/filing/finding it in the future?  Do folks put it into a quick collection?  Say you wanted to print it in a year, exactly the same. Where do you find it, and the paper you used, and notes?  What I'm doing now is putting my final edits (of a copy of the original) into a quick collection called "FINAL" and putting a few notes in the metadata caption field for type of paper I used...etc.  However, I also place a print into an archival box with notes on the back as a hard back up. This seems redundant and I feel like I'm missing something.  This was brought about by a print I made years ago in PS of a Yellowstone image.  I somehow lost my edited version on the PC and could never, for the life of me, replicate it.  It was on VFA paper and I have one little beautiful 6x9 of this image I cherish and can't seem to replicate it.  I may have done it in SilverEfex or something...I just can't recall and I want to avoid that in the future.  Many of my prints I actually hang up unlike most of my friends who simply show them on the web or pad. 
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digitaldog

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Most of my prints have output specific edits from soft proofing thus, are Proof Copies. Proprietary data inside LR! So I export this as a DNG. Now all kinds of data from LR and the raw are saved to disk and of course, backed up to multiple locations.
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jrsforums

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Most of my prints have output specific edits from soft proofing thus, are Proof Copies. Proprietary data inside LR! So I export this as a DNG. Now all kinds of data from LR and the raw are saved to disk and of course, backed up to multiple locations.

Doesn’t the exported DNG still have “proprietary LR data” and require LR to do anything with it?
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John

digitaldog

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Doesn’t the exported DNG still have “proprietary LR data” and require LR to do anything with it?
Absolutely! And the same would be true of a layered TIFF which I also keep. But at least I have a physical file I could move into ACR and lose nothing. Or another raw converter and lose a lot of the edits but still not be that badly off. I don't mind the space overhead of saving off a DNG that I intend to print within LR. The Virtual part makes me a tad more nervous.
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Jeffrey Saldinger

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With very few exceptions, the first time I print a “final” print it is a .psd printed from Photoshop (I make further prints, when necessary, from Lightroom).

I use layer comps a lot to document my work in Ps, especially the states I’ve proofed along the way.  When I make my first “final print” I document the paper and size (i.e. paper size and image size), as well as the date printed, in a layer comp.  I used to use the note tool for this information, but once I became comfortable using custom workspaces I made one showing layers, layer comps, and other panels in a comfortable format.

In Lightroom, I use keywords and smart collections to keep track of all the “final” psds.  Actually, I use the keywords “Done?” (yes, with the question mark, since “Done” feels funny for me to use when I can go back and rework something) and “boxed” as well as keywords for the paper size (and, for each paper size, the image size) and for the actual box in which the print is stored.

With all the smart collections that can be made from this keywording as well as my subject keywording it is has become easy (if now somewhat routine and tedious) to keep track of my favorite printed images.

As far as losing track of important files is concerned, as you say, it’s a workflow question.  What I’ve described will work for me only if I don’t lose track of the favored .psd.

When I want to keep a paper record of something new that has worked in developing a file in Ps, I make a screen shot of the layers in question (and sometimes annotate it after printing) and keep in the appropriate folder in a filing cabinet, sometimes taped to the back of a print of the image (on letter size paper, of course).
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Jeffrey
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Laminarman

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Wow.  Suddenly feeling very stupid as some of these terms and concepts are foreign to me.  I do back everything up redundantly but perhaps the next step is a LR book or spend a weekend delving into that rather than taking more photographs I'll never get to : (   
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Jeffrey Saldinger

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Wow.  Suddenly feeling very stupid as some of these terms and concepts are foreign to me.  I do back everything up redundantly but perhaps the next step is a LR book or spend a weekend delving into that rather than taking more photographs I'll never get to : (

Consider Martin Evening’s books on Lightroom and Photoshop as well as Lynda dot com.  I too try to maintain an optimum balance of taking pictures, working on them in Lr and Ps, and learning from posts here.  Sometimes a weekend is enough, sometimes not.
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Jeffrey
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MarkJohnson

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Where do you find it, and the paper you used, and notes? 
This is simple minded and maybe flawed but: when a print is made, Develop module's history state records "Print" with date/time in brackets; you can make a Snapshot of that history state and add whatever descriptive text you want, to 80 character limit, e.g. "Print(06/08/2017 11:35:44)A3+,s/p,icmPercept,IGFS"; you can then give it a rating you only use for final prints, e.g. 5 star with or without specific colour coding as well. Searching for this rating at least gives a list of 'final printed edits'. (My prints are also from soft proofed output specific edits and are proof copies.)
« Last Edit: October 29, 2017, 04:25:00 am by MarkJohnson »
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Mark J

Laminarman

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This is simple minded and maybe flawed but: when a print is made, Develop module's history state records "Print" with date/time in brackets; you can make a Snapshot of that history state and add whatever descriptive text you want, to 80 character limit, e.g. "Print (06/08/2017 11:35:44)A3+,s/p,icmPercept,IGFS"; you can then give it a rating you only use for final prints, e.g. 5 star with or without specific colour coding as well. Searching for this rating at least gives a list of 'final printed edits'. (My prints are also from soft proofed output specific edits and are proof copies.)

Thank you Mark, I'll look at that too.  I picked up a book locally called The Zen of Post Production and I'll look at that too.  I've been through a M Evening book, but any book puts me to sleep after a bit : ) 
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Hoggy

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.... but any book puts me to sleep after a bit : )

You're far from alone, there.  ;D
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vrkaya

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I keep the final .tif file and proof copy in a collection I call Gallery Prints. If I need to print additional copies of gallery work, I know exactly where to find it this way. I use the Caption field to store printing notes, e.g. cell size, number version, etc... Other then that, I keep a journal.

For files in progress, I keep them in a WORKING folder within a folder with the shoot date and name. I do a lot of incremental file naming and those versions stay in the WORKING folder. I also put WORKING in the filename until finished, then it's named FINAL. I also include in the filename if Output Sharpening is completed or not.

Just the way that has worked for me for a couple of years...
Ron
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