DAM ~ I'm drowning in images!

[Uncle Pug]

I've been away for a while... learning about photography, from the basics of lighting, composition, ect. to the finer art of pixel pushing in photoshop.

On the photo race track from high end DSLRs to high end graphic workstations I've discovered something easily overlooked but of upmost importance:

How do I keep from drowning in image files?

I have tens of thousands of images... and copies of those images. And copies of adjustments of the images. Hard drives full. Desktop littered with file folders... some structured in recognizable fashion... many not.

One folder in particular is named "D300 dump pile"... it remains unsorted.

Enter the most important piece of software I have: A Digital Asset Manager other wise known as a DAM.

My DAM of choice is Lightroom 2

LR2 is not another pixel based photo editor. It is not an alternative to photoshop... though it has largely replaced photoshot in my case. In fact CS3 is a mere plugin to LR2 and seldom used.

The real power of LR2 is as a DAM. It is first and foremost a database program.

You IMPORT your photos into the LR2 database ~ at which time you can:
1) transfer them to a new location, say from card to hard drive - or not
2) copy them to a back up drive
3) keyword them as well as add copyright and other meta data (this is very important)
4) add presets to the picture files
5) build preview files to view pictures immediately at 1:1 (or whatever you decide.)
All of this happens at the same time during IMPORT

 

[Uncle Pug]

After IMPORTing your photo files into the LR2 database they are now in your LIBRARY. Where ever they exist on your hard drive/CD/thumbdrive/external HD/network, ect. LR2 can find them and so can you IF you applied keywords to them.

KEYWORDS are the key... that is why they are called key words.

On my computer (i7 cpu w/12 gig ram and a velociraptor 10K rpm program drive + 1tb 7K file drive + backup RAID) finding pictures (that have been keyworded) seems instantaneous.

 

[Uncle Pug]

The second most important aspect of LR2 ~ and this is what sets it apart from other DAMs ~ is the powerful GLOBAL and NON-DESTRUCTIVE editing capabilites it has.

I no longer have to make copies of images I've adjusted in Photoshop ~ nor do I have to save over the top of the original :cringe:

With LR2 any changes I make ride along with the original and I can at any time go back in the HISTORY pane and select a prior version.

Additionally with LR2 it is now possible to make localized adjustments to an image using adjustment brush. This powerful tool is simply incredible once you learn how to use it. The adjustment brush is largely the reason I seldom move a picture into CS3. Of course LR2 and CS3/4 work seamlessly with each other if that is every necessary.

LR2 also has a very powerful spot removal tool that is closer to the clone tool in CS3 except it actually works and isn't buggy like CS3.

 

[Uncle Pug]

EXPORT! I can take any image and export it using LR2 with or without any of the adjustments I've made to it.

I don't need to make a jpg copy of a camera raw file to email or whatever... I just export it!

I can export it as a jpg resized, renamed and sharpened for screen with the correct color space imbedded.

I can export it along with other pictures as a webgallery directly uploading via FTP to my website.

I can export it to be printed as a single or in combination with other photos, all sized and sharpened for whatever printing device is going to be used.

I love what I can do with photofiles using LR2... but most of all:

The DAM Lightroom saved me from drowning in images files!!!

 

[Cave Diver]

UP!

Great to see you back!

 

[Uncle Pug]

Do yourself a favor before you drown in a sea of image files....

Get a DAM and start Keywording.

It dosn't have to be LR2 (but if you have the computer horsepower LR2 rocks.)

 

[aku321]

Wow LR2 sounds like a good program. What is CS3??

 

[*dave*]

Thanks, I'll heed that advice. Not only do I have a few thousand images, they're scattered over various drives, discs and machines and it's not getting any better.

Great to see you posting.

Do yourself a favor before you drown in a sea of image files....

Get a DAM and start Keywording.

It dosn't have to be LR2 (but if you have the computer horsepower LR2 rocks.)

 

[Uncle Pug]

Wow LR2 sounds like a good program. What is CS3??

CS3 is the the high end version of Photoshop just before CS4

Photoshop is a Destructive Pixel Based Editor ~ that is to say that it manipulates the individual pixels and unless you save the result as a separate file (which in the case of a TIFF or PSD could be huge) you will overwrite and lose your original.

Thanks, I'll heed that advice. Not only do I have a few thousand images, they're scattered over various drives, discs and machines and it's not getting any better.

Intervention is always better sooner rather than later. :biggrin:

You are only at thousands. Don't let it grow to tens of thousands before you act.

BTW: Think about storage while you are at it.

 

[Uncle Pug]

This may not be the kind of thing you enjoy doing nor even the look you like in a picture... but it demonstrates how quick and easy it is to make some dramatic changes to an image using LR2 and maybe even more importantly... how easy it is to export an original version afterwards.

This is a picture of a piling cap. Nothing special, except the dynamic range (from dark to light) was more than the D700 could reproduce. Could have done an HDR rendering using Photoshop and several images with different exposure values. Or...

A quick swabbing of the metal cap with the adjustment brush set to desaturate (remove color) and increase clarity (bump up contrast and emphasize certain colors) then add in a global reduction in exposure to saturate the blue sky and...

Ooops... I wanted to show the original for comparison! No problem. Just click the original state and hit export...

Oh... black border added on export using the LR2 plug-in "mogrify".