Digital BW, The Print

Hi,
   While I am a professional artist/photographer today I spent my previous career life as a Computer Systems Analyst for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC (27 years).  As computer professionals we were called upon to maintain and analyze huge quantities of data e.g. the high, low and closing price of every stock ever traded on the American and New York stock exchanges.
   Here are some guidelines I developed during those decades of experience.

1.  Do not use proprietary storage formats.  Sooner or later the company that developed the software will change the format burdening you with tons of work or worse yet go out of business leaving you with no way to output YOUR hard work or the output will be a comma delimited file requiring expert programmer help to recover the data.  Think big bucks.

2.  Name each and every file with a unique name.  Yes it can be done and quite easily.  Include in the name the date exposed for sure and also other info that will help you to identify the file w/o having to actually look at it, such as where, who,version, use and other tags.  On a PC the maximum length of a filename is 255 characters.  I have over 90,000 image files of all different types and not one of them has a duplicate name.  Be careful of sort order of the file names.  Remember the computer needs to have the date as YEARMMDD in order for you to understand the chronological order of the files within a folder. 

3.  Backup, Backup, and Backup.  When your Lightroom or Aperture catalog gets corrupted or lost you will lose hundreds and even thousands of hours of work.  Perhaps there will be a loss that is not even recoverable.  The reason for 3 backups is one is your master file that you work with daily, the second is a copy of the master in case the drive goes bad (sure they do MTBF) and the third copy must be stored off-site.  This is to protect against catastrophes such as fire and theft.  I store my third copy in a bank vault and try to swap it once a month.

Everyone thinks that 'Oh, it will not happen to me.'  I did too but 30 years ago it did and I have never forgotten the pain when my boss said she did not care how I made up the lost work as long as I did it on my own time.

I give lectures on this topic but this is the first time I have written anything down.  I know the subject by heart and I usually talk for 90 minutes so I cannot put it all down here.  If anyone has specific comments I would be glad answer as best as I can.

BertGF

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Darlow <ad@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Geraldine:
> 
> I agree that grid vs. Loupe view can be confusing (and if you press T, you can lose the Toolbar, which confuses a lot of people). I've spent thousands of hours in Lightroom and I've taught a lot of people to use it, and I still get frustrated from time to time!
> 
> Here are a few quick tips to try:
> 
> 1. Remember "GE," G will take you to Grid, and E to Loupe, then use the minus and plus keys to make the thumbnails larger or smaller (easier than the slider in my opinion).
> 2. Use a date-based system for cataloging your work. I have a pretty long article on this here to give you an idea of what I mean by that:
> 
> http://prophotoresource.com/home/item/528-tracking-gigabytes-how-to-organize-your-image-collection.html?tmpl=component&print=1
> 
> Hope that helps!
> 
> Andrew
> 
> Andrew Darlow
> Editor, The Imaging Buffet
> http://www.imagingbuffet.com
> Author, 301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques:
> An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers - http://www.inkjettips.com
> and
> Pet Photography 101: 
> Tips for Taking Better Photos of Your Dog or Cat - http://www.PhotoPetTips.com
> http://facebook.com/andrewdarlow
> 
> 
> On Jan 11, 2012, at 9:44 AM, Geraldine Powell wrote:
> 
> > I really agree with Paul. I have been using Lightroom for four years 
> > and I am still befuddled by it. I much prefer the camera raw interface 
> > in Photoshop to the Lightroom one. I know they do the same things, but 
> > I can see what I am doing much better in camera raw.
> > I still have situations where I cannot for the life of me change from a 
> > grid view to a whole page view. Normally, there is no problem, but now 
> > and then I just have to put up with what Lightroom has decided to do.
> > I also hate the Lightroom cataloging system. I try to make one that 
> > works for me but it is not great. I am actually thinking of dumping 
> > Lightroom. I see the main problem as an unfriendly user interface and 
> > real lack of integration with Photoshop.
> > If they expanded Adobe Bridge capability it could be great.
> > Lightroom may be great for the technically very savvy superuser but it 
> > is not good for someone like me. I am not going to spend any more money 
> > on it.
> > Geraldine
> > 
> >
>