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Nice addition to my workflow
This article helped me add or slightly differ my digital & scanned image process that I already do. The IPTC info was particularly interesting since I freelance for local papers, but never really post my stuff to the wire.
I'd like to add that older versions of photoshop, like CS 1 have the ability to batch rename as well. When you bring up the file browser (Window > File Browser) you'll see a file menu on the browser (not the monitor) taht says Automate. You can batch rename files there as well. For all of us who feel Photoshop is great, but we don't need to update every 6 months.
Apple Aperture does your entire workflow, and more!
I'm surprised Aperture was not mentioned, as this is exactly what it was designed for! It does everything in your workflow, plus about 90% of what I would normally use Photoshop for.
Gold!
re: volatility of optical discs:
My very first batch of writeable CDs cost $10 each. For they were Kodak Gold. What could be finer?
The "gold" flaked off within a year.
Best archive option so far...
I too wouldn't trust a dvd or cd for archiving. True, drives wear out too. Still I think high quality drives are the winner.
My best solution so far is to fill a drive with backups and then pull it out and store it in a static bag in a fire-proof or offsite location. Apps like disctracker are good for keeping track of what is on each removed drive.
Apple seems to agree that this is the way to go about it with the release of the Mac Pro and its easily swappable drives.
There are also external drive cases that are easy to put swap drives for those times when you need to access that which you have archived.
So far it's working for me. I even make disc images of software discs and archive them. If your main drive goes down mid project it sure is easier to install from images on another drive than feeding the disc drive only to find that one of your install disc's has gone bad.
For the Windows folks...
I've actually loaded "cygwin" to run UNIX like scripts to load my photos. A script finds a live flash drive then moves the files one at a time to my hard drive, moving it to a directory created for the date the picture is taken. As the files are moved, they are renamed to a "timestamp" from the camera. This is handy when multiple cameras are used: it sequences the pictures into the order they were taken. I use this on my laptop to "empty" my flash cards while on vacation. I pick through them when I'm on the plane or in the vehicle traveling to the next location.
For thumbnails, I use "Image Alchemy" from Handmade Software. I have run 3,000 8mp pictures through the software, downsampling and increasing the JPG compression, in about 6 minutes.
I'd like to have something that would insert the copyright info as part of this batch and find the "rotation key" from the header to correct the rotation for my older applications to do likewise, but I haven't found anything yet.
After I edit the photos, deleting the bad ones, I can run another script that will rename each file in directory based on the name. For example the pictures are sorted into "Cheetah/," "CoatiMundi/," and "AmurLeopard/." The script goes in and renames each of the files in the directories "Cheetah001.jpg," "Cheetah002.jpg" and so forth. If the directory already has a "Cheetah097.jpg," it starts the numbering of the new stuff at 98.
My back-up are ok. First backup goes to an external hard drive, placed there using the FREE SyncToy, from MS. Roughly once a quarter, the photos get backed up to DVDs.
Brilliant! Like me . . .
Ben has cobbled together a workflow like mine -- a genius, he is -- although mine departs on the back end because we do different work. Plus I like lotsa hard drives. I too use Photo Mechanic, Bridge, and even Disk Tracker.
Once Mac's Spotlight arrived I stopped trying to convince myself I need cataloguing software (Cumulus, Portfolio, et al). It's always distracting, time-consuming. Hefty search engines pretty much eliminate their need -- if you apply keywords and filenames with fervor.
Since most of my work is from a set client list, my filenames are always "client_job/subject_1234...." I always assign four-digit numbers. Little duplication (one-in-10,000), easy to remember in the short term.
Big diff: mucho hard drives. I buy 2 or 4 at a time, at the $100 price point (newegg.com). Takes me several months to fill, these days, a 250gig drive. Two hours billing covers a pair.
All jobs are dumped on a drive which is instantly mirrored (ChronoSync, best backer-upper ever). I also burn DVDs of raw dumps of all nightmare-to-lose jobs. (Sunrise shots I camped out to get? 3rd backup. Portrait of new bank vice president? Maybe not.) I also save resulting PSDs to that job's raw folder.
When a matched pair of drives is full one goes offsite. I can keep about three old archive drives online thanks to WiebeTech's bay docks. They've paid for themselves thanks to my standing $100 "sorry you lost both of those CDs" fee.
I use actions to generate TIFs, JPGs, and web browsers. Only the TIFs are archived, on a separate volume dedicated to finished (sharpened, lens-corrected, delivered) client files.
In short:
--All raw shoots and resulting PSDs land forever on a drive that is constantly mirrored.
-- All finished client files are saved to another drive (a single 200gig that will take a long time to fill).
-- I burn 3rd-copy discs as paranoia dictates. Finished files at that point have been delivered to clients at least twofold.
No silver bullet
There are many easier ways to shortcut these processes e.g. if you download images from a memory card using something like Canon Image Viewer, you can rename the images during intake. And it seems odd to sift through the images and THEN add IPTC info. I add keywords first and then let software search on those keywords to categorize the images for me. This seems to be somewhat of a entry level approach to this topic.
Don't trust optical media
The biggest problem with ths workflow is trusting original images on CDs or DVDs and trashing the originals. Big mistake. There should be some reliable media used to store originals. A couple of hard drives in a RAID 1 array should do it. Then when it's full, split the two drives up and move one off-site. And don't use it except to get to originals.
There are some very easy ways to use bare hard drives for the few minutes you need them without putting them in drive cases when retrieving originals. (Handling is trickier but it works fine). But the bottom line is, do NOT trust CDs and DVDs to be reliable backups. Even the gold-based ones that claim to survive 200-300 years.
RAIDs and Hard Disks as long-term storage
I agree with the writer who suggested that optical media may not be good for permanent storage. I assume that my DVDs will eventually fail, be damaged, or lost, and that is why I make TWO of each one.
RAID drive arrays and hard disks, are great for the storage and retrieval of current projects. But I would argue that they are mechanical, and thus will eventually fail with tragic results if they are the repository of photos.
I have seen two "failproof" RAID systems fail at local establishments in the past 12 months with devastating effects. In one case, all the data was lost. In the other, the loss was limited to replaceable software. But, in both cases, these were RAID systems that, according to the manufacturers, were incorruptible.
I will continue to write to DVDs, and to store them in two safe locations, and hope they don't fail, but I will also be diligent to migrate my data to new technologies as they become available.
Brian Lawler