digital workflow: preserve those captures

Digital Workflow, Stage 1: backing up digital captures

Shooting great photographs means little if you don’t handle your files properly. I’d like to share the outline of my digital workflow, one refined over the past few years at the photo studio. Workflow is a process that takes time and experience to implement and understand. We’ll be taking it a step at a time. This week: properly caring for your RAW digital captures (we are all shooting RAW, aren’t we?).

If you are serious about managing your digital files properly, I should tell you right now that the definitive resource is Peter Krogh’s DAM (Digital Asset Management) book. It gives a thorough examination of the subject be prepared to learn. Get your hands on it if you can (but not our copy, please, because people don’t seem to bring it back once it’s been loaned).

Before diving in too deeply I should mention there are many ways to tackle this topic and new methods and software tools are introduced on a regular basis. My personal photo workflow differs a bit from the studio workflow, which differs from how my business partner, Bob, handles his images. For these reasons I will mention various softwares while trying to speak in more general terms about our process. The goal at this point is to help everyone, whether they have the latest software or must use a freeware download to organize their images.

It is worth noting that newer softwares like Lightroom (and Bridge within Photoshop CS3) can accomplish a number of the tasks that once required multiple softwares. For a personal or small operation they may provide all that you need. You can get Free Trial Downloads from Adobe for both Lightroom and CS3. I own Lightroom but really need instruction from someplace like Kelby Training to get a thorough understanding. It’s on the list…

We move our date with a firewire card reader.

At Daylight Photo, there are four stages in the life of every digital file prepared for a client:

1. RAW
2. Selected
3. Working
4. Final

So if you’d like to try things the “Daylight Photo way”, create a folder on your desktop right now, while you’re thinking of it. This folder is dedicated to just one job (or set of images), whether we’ve filled a bunch of flash cards or only shot a few photos. Inside this folder create the following four sub-folders: RAW, Selected, Working and Final. I have this folder hierarchy created and sitting empty on my desktop at all times. Then, when I’ve shot some new images, I duplicate this empty set of folders for the fresh photos to go into. I then name the main folder with our specific, assigned job number. Many people use the day’s date as their job / tracking number: 2008_05_13.

I should have mentioned that, before shooting, make sure your camera is set to number files in a continuous sequence, rather than starting over at 0001 every time you start a new series. This alleviates having a bunch of files all named the same thing later down the road.

After you’ve shot your job or series of personal images and filled a flash card or two:

Download the RAW files into the RAW folder on your desktop using the fastest card reader you have available. Downloading from the camera is slow and you don’t want to risk file corruption if the download is interrupted (camera gets turned off or battery dies).

A quality CD/DVD, a full-sized jewel case andan archival DVD marker are the tools of the trade.

Now, before doing anything else, I temporarily copy the RAW files to an external hard drive. We have a dedicated portable drive with multiple connections for this specific purpose (officially called the LaCie 160GB Rugged Triple Interface Portable FireWire 800/400 USB 2.0 Hard Drive). The RAW files will stay on this drive until a job is completed, maybe a few weeks (or until the drive fills up). This is the fail-safe backup to the backup.

Before even breaking for lunch or reaching for another iced tea, burn a CD or DVD of the RAW files from the desktop. No file renaming, no metadata, no nothin’ else has been done at this point. This disk is our primary backup for the longevity of the RAW files, so we really take care of it. Bob thinks I’m crazy for not renaming the files beforehand but I don’t want to alter any data at all. Call me crazy (it’s okay, he does already).

On the CD or DVD, as close to the center hole as we can get, we write the job number (for you that might be: 2008_05_13) with an archival marker and also “RAW” (see photo). The way I understand it, gases emitted from a regular marker can accelerate the deterioration of storage media. We take no chances and use a specific DVD marker.

Gently place the disk in a DVD case and store it standing up (like books on a bookshelf) to help retain the disk shape. A major goal here is to refrain from touching the recording surface or bending the disk. Using the roomier DVD cases (instead of the slimmer CD cases) gives the disk more room “to breathe”. Bending or twising also greatly contributes to disk damage and can harm the recording surface. If you bend disks like a potato chip when pulling them out of a case, try to be a little gentler next time.

The backup DVD library.

A note on CD / DVDs: I’m not an expert but it’s generally recognized that the re-writable (-RW) variety are not as stable as the one-time (-R) writable disks (more on DVD formats here). We prefer Taiyo Yuden brand CDs and DVDs. Again, from what I hear, this brand is the best quality available outside of the very expensive gold disks. I’m being honest in saying we don’t spring for the very expensive gold ones. Most media (regardless of who “labels” them) come out of just a few factories in China and Taiwan. The Taiyo Yuden are made in Japan and regarded as being of higher quality.

A downside to the Taiyo Yuden disks: they’re generally sold in quantities of 600. For our studio it’s not a big deal but for the hobbyist, well, that’s a lot of media to buy at one time, especially when discount disks are available for pennies at the local office supply store. From MacMall they run $195 for the 600 Taiyo Yuden White Inkjet Hub Printable 8X DVD-R and $169 for the 600 Taiyo Yuden silver lacquer 52x CD-R 6×100 pc spindl.

Whew, that’s it and that’s a lot. Next week it’s on to the next stage of the process: Selecting files for processing.

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