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Author Topic: what do you do with alternate photos?  (Read 3665 times)

eatstickyrice

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« on: July 30, 2008, 09:58:33 am »

Hi, I'm curious what the rest of you are doing with alternate photos in your Adobe Lightroom workflow. Like many, I typically shoot more than one shot of a particular subject. Then, I go through a process of elimination to narrow down to about 2-3 options. I choose one of those to submit to stock photography, but typically hang on to the other two options as alternatives in case a client ever comes back and asks if I might have additional shots of a certain subject. So, my question is, am I just clogging up my hard drives with unnecessary photos, or is it worth hanging on to these? If so, should I put them in same folder with the top photo I choose to submit? I'm asking this based on Adobe Lightroom's workflow. I have been keeping the alternates in a separate folder, but then I can't stack the photos anymore. However, for whenever the day comes again to migrate softwares, it would seem wise to have a non-software way to know which photos I've submitted or like best.

Your thoughts?
Rick
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ErikKaffehr

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2008, 12:53:46 pm »

Hi,

I tend to save everything I shoot, just throw out obvious garbage. I use star ratings
*         don't keep
**        Keep
***      good
****    very good
*****   excellent

Hard disks are pretty cheap now, but backup is less then convenient. Also I save my pictures as DNG in a year/month/date structure.

No recommendations, just what I do...

Erik

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Hi, I'm curious what the rest of you are doing with alternate photos in your Adobe Lightroom workflow. Like many, I typically shoot more than one shot of a particular subject. Then, I go through a process of elimination to narrow down to about 2-3 options. I choose one of those to submit to stock photography, but typically hang on to the other two options as alternatives in case a client ever comes back and asks if I might have additional shots of a certain subject. So, my question is, am I just clogging up my hard drives with unnecessary photos, or is it worth hanging on to these? If so, should I put them in same folder with the top photo I choose to submit? I'm asking this based on Adobe Lightroom's workflow. I have been keeping the alternates in a separate folder, but then I can't stack the photos anymore. However, for whenever the day comes again to migrate softwares, it would seem wise to have a non-software way to know which photos I've submitted or like best.

Your thoughts?
Rick
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Brad Proctor

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2008, 01:03:51 pm »

I do exactly as above
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Brad Proctor

madmanchan

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2008, 03:29:55 pm »

Agreed, just use ratings (or color labels, etc.) to separate the best images from the ones a cut below / alternates. No need to fuss with moving files around on disk.
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Eric Chan

dalethorn

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2008, 04:03:04 pm »

I assume Lightroom uses a proprietary filing system, in which case you may want to protect your investment in case you ever change software.  The best way is, whatever filename belongs to your "final" cut of an image, use the same filename for the alternates, and add an '_a' or '_b' etc. to those filenames so no matter where you go, they will have that "permanent" link to the original or "final" version.
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madmanchan

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2008, 09:45:03 pm »

It's an SQLite database, actually, which is pretty well-established.
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Eric Chan

ErikKaffehr

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2008, 12:54:30 am »

Hi!

I don't ingest my pictures in the data base, just convert it to DNG and put in folders Year/Month/Day.

I know that the pictures can be stored in the database but I think it is a very bad idea.

Erik

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It's an SQLite database, actually, which is pretty well-established.
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ajtaylor

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2008, 06:13:16 am »

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I don't ingest my pictures in the data base

Unless I'm missing something, LR doesn't have its own database for storing photos - Aperture does, and I think LR did for one of the betas, but it now either imports images at their current location, or you can move them to a place of your choosing, but either way, the images are on disk in a standard folder/file format.
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madmanchan

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #8 on: August 01, 2008, 08:24:38 am »

No, LR very much has a database. (Their term now is 'catalog' but implementation-wise it's a database.)

That's what makes it possible to search quickly for files and update metadata, etc. even when the files are on a separate drive that happens to be offline.
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Eric Chan

john beardsworth

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #9 on: August 01, 2008, 12:07:51 pm »

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Unless I'm missing something, LR doesn't have its own database for storing photos - Aperture does, and I think LR did for one of the betas, but it now either imports images at their current location, or you can move them to a place of your choosing, but either way, the images are on disk in a standard folder/file format.
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In both cases, the database stores data about the photographs but does not store the photos themselves - the import process is more like registering the files and their locations. What you are thinking of regarding Aperture is that it optionally adds the pictures to a package file, but this can be easily opened in Finder.
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ajtaylor

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what do you do with alternate photos?
« Reply #10 on: August 01, 2008, 12:08:34 pm »

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No, LR very much has a database. (Their term now is 'catalog' but implementation-wise it's a database.)

That's what makes it possible to search quickly for files and update metadata, etc. even when the files are on a separate drive that happens to be offline.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=212282\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yes it does have a database/catalogue, but someone (Erik) was talking about ingesting photos into a database, which LR does not do - it stores them in a "normal" on disk format, unlike Aperture which can store photos in its own "package" format.
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