Where do you keep final images

[hirohhhh]

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My workflow pretty much from the begining was to edit photos in Lightroom Classic and then export JPEGs into Apple Photos while keeping edited DNGs in my LrC library. Overall, I'm happy with this solution, but over the almost decade I have so many photos on both places, which most of them are duplicates. I'm thinking separating them and keeping only iPhone photos in Apple Photos library and all other photos into LrC library. The only problem is viewing experience on mobile, which becomes more and more important over years. I can much quicker and easier go through the entire Photos library than Lightroom on the phone. Also search is better, face tagging etc, so having my Leica photos in Apple Photos library came handy many times when I want to show photos to someone or find something quickly.

Another downside of having duplicated photos is that sometimes, I get back to the old Photos and change the editing for some reason, and then I have different versions in LrC and Photos.

How do you store your final images digitally? I emphasized digitally for all those who'll say to print them out and don't care about the rest, which I do. I have over 200 prints, but I still have over 60,000 digital files that I have to deal with

[LocalHero1953]

I agree about the need to be able to show your photos. I don't bother on a smartphone, but I want to do it on my Surface Book laptop. The latter is not fast enough for regular Lightroom Classic CC use, and the screen, though good, is small - so my main photo store is on my fast desktop with a 27" screen. My current solution is to copy up my catalogue and photo store to a 2Tb Samsung T5 portable SSD. I keep a copy of LR Classic CC on the laptop, and when I want to show photos (or export them for social media) I simply connect the T5 to the laptop and open the LR catalogue there. I never do any editing on the laptop in LR Classic CC. I will have to get a larger portable SSD when the catalogue grows.

Confusingly, I also run LR CC (i.e. the version that uses cloud storage) on the laptop, and often use it for ingesting raw files from the camera SD card, and maybe doing some preliminary culling and editing. They get automatically uploaded (as collections) to the cloud, and downloaded to the primary catalogue on my desktop later on.

This is not a straightforward combination of uses, but it works in my head!

[ianman]

Recent files (dng or scans) are on my MacBook for selection, any pp I may want to do and jpeg conversion. Once that is done, my files are stored on a 16 TB NAS with raid and backed up to Amazon Glacier. I have nowhere near 60.000 though.

Edited November 11, 2021 by ianman

[Doug A]

All of my scans are stored in a folder structure on my Apple Desktop, backed up in the iCloud. The individual scans are tagged yyyymmdd-ff. They are indexed by physical proof prints of the individual rolls. Between my wife's encyclopedic memory of dates and associated events and my visual memory of where on a page images are located it seldom takes us longer than three or four minutes to find a particular image in the 90 years of images (mine and my father's). And, of course, all of them are backed up by the physical negatives, except for some nitrocellulose negatives that were contact printed on modern film stock at considerable expense and then disposed of safely. 

That's the analog side of things. On the digital side all of my wife's and my digital images, including some post processed scans (roughly 5% of the total scans), are in Apple Photos on the 1T SSD of my MacBook, backed up in the iCloud. 

[prk60091]

My 34859 images reside on my iPhone 13promax , on my 2021 M1 air and in iCloud 

[hirohhhh]

12 minutes ago, prk60091 said:

My 34859 images reside on my iPhone 13promax , on my 2021 M1 air and in iCloud 

Lightroom or Apple Photos? Or folders on iCloud Drive? Or something else?

[marchyman]

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I don't know that I ever have a "final" image.  I'm still learning how to better edit what comes out of the camera.

Original raw files (and jpegs from back in the day) are kept on a drive full of photos.  That drive is backed up to two other drives at various times.

The photos were "managed" using Aperture.  Then Lightroom.  And now Capture One.  All are non-destructive editors.  There is no need to create separate image files to see an edited version.  Yes, I lost edits when switching apps.  That means a re-edit if I want to re-visit an image originally processed on an earlier app.  I can live with that, because....

I do export edited versions of some images to share on the web.  Once uploaded to whatever web site I delete my local copy.  One of the sites I use is SmugMug to share pics wth family and friends.   I also export edited versions of my "favorites".  Those images are imported into Photos and are synched across compter, tablet, and phone.

[evikne]

I use LR Classic for all my photo editing, organizing and sharing.

Even though I only have the standard 20 GB Photography plan, I can sync an unlimited number of photos as smart previews to the cloud. I've synced 25.000 photos from LR Classic, but still don't use anything of the 20 GB cloud storage. All the synced photos are available in the LR app on my iPhone. I've made a number of synced albums too. These make it faster to find photos in the app. 

With one click I can also make any of these albums available on the web and share with anyone. These web albums have been improved lately. The appearance can be customized somewhat, but this must be done from LR CC or LR Web.

I like that all photo edits are immediately synced to the web pages and on my iPhone, so my images are always up to date.

[pippy]

Images shot during any one year (Jan 01 - Dec 31) are initially stored on a folder entitled - rather imaginatively, I thought - 'Leica' on my desktop.

Within this folder I will have any number of sub-folders such as '2021 08 02 Cambridge' corresponding either to one day's shoot or, alternatively, 2021 10 24 France which might be snaps from a whole holiday period.

Inside this folder there will usually be two further folders; 'MM' and 'M-D'(self-explanatory). Within these two folders will be yet another pair of folders named 'DNG' and 'TIFFs'. Inside these two folders there will be all images shot during that day / period and, in the folder marked 'TIFFs' there will be, in addition to the original files as processed-out, various versions of the images I've worked on and given sub-titles to indicate at what point the image was created or for what purpose the image was saved; for instance some are saved for screen use only (as, for example, for display here in the Leica Forum) whist others are saved for another specific use such as 'Print Version A3 / Canson Baryta'.

Throughout the on-going year - usually every month or so - all new files will be transferred to one Leica-specific portable hard-drive for back-up. Periodically - usually every six months or so - every file will be further transferred to a more general portable hard-drive as a back-up.

It works for me!

Philip.

Edited November 11, 2021 by pippy

[prk60091]

7 hours ago, hirohhhh said:

Lightroom or Apple Photos? Or folders on iCloud Drive? Or something else?

apple photos

 

[ianforber]

On 11/11/2021 at 4:41 PM, hirohhhh said:

My workflow pretty much from the begining was to edit photos in Lightroom Classic and then export JPEGs into Apple Photos while keeping edited DNGs in my LrC library. Overall, I'm happy with this solution, but over the almost decade I have so many photos on both places, which most of them are duplicates. I'm thinking separating them and keeping only iPhone photos in Apple Photos library and all other photos into LrC library. The only problem is viewing experience on mobile, which becomes more and more important over years. I can much quicker and easier go through the entire Photos library than Lightroom on the phone. Also search is better, face tagging etc, so having my Leica photos in Apple Photos library came handy many times when I want to show photos to someone or find something quickly.

Another downside of having duplicated photos is that sometimes, I get back to the old Photos and change the editing for some reason, and then I have different versions in LrC and Photos.

How do you store your final images digitally? I emphasized digitally for all those who'll say to print them out and don't care about the rest, which I do. I have over 200 prints, but I still have over 60,000 digital files that I have to deal with

Similar workflow. I edit in Capture One and export the few (emphasise “few”) of my better ones to Apple Photos in case I want to show people. I don’t duplicate the library in its entirety.  

Depending on the photo, I might keep the edited DNG in my folder structure, or delete it and just save the edited TIFF.  I delete heavily though so I only have about 2,000 files in my computer folder structure (several copies saved on external disks) and fewer than 200 in Apple Photos. 

[hirohhhh]

8 hours ago, ianforber said:

Similar workflow. I edit in Capture One and export the few (emphasise “few”) of my better ones to Apple Photos in case I want to show people. I don’t duplicate the library in its entirety.  

Depending on the photo, I might keep the edited DNG in my folder structure, or delete it and just save the edited TIFF.  I delete heavily though so I only have about 2,000 files in my computer folder structure (several copies saved on external disks) and fewer than 200 in Apple Photos. 

I hope this works for you. I'm glad I got the advice in my early photography days not to delete anything, and since then I keep all my photos, except the accidental shots, or completely missed focus or exposure.  With good organization, I don't have a problem with so many files that I might not be ever using, but I'm glad I kept them because even years after, I came back to the old photos and found something amazing that I didn't even notice before. Especially in my early days, if the subject is not tack sharp, I would consider it as non-keeper, even though it might be graphically interesting if converted to black and white, for example. We grow as photographers, and often our perspective and taste changes or evolves and we may like something that we didn't before and vice versa. I always suggest to people not to delete anything, because to me it's an incredible feeling when I dig something great among my old photos that I previously overlooked. Some photos that would be certainly deleted 5 years ago, ended up as a print that I absolutely love.

Edited November 15, 2021 by hirohhhh

[ianforber]

Thanks. I know my approach is different than many here - and I know it has its disadvantages. For me though, I prefer to have a library of half decent pictures than a lot of files I will rarely look at. My test is to think whether I would ever hang a print of it on the wall, or whether it has enough emotional interest that my wife would kill me if I deleted it (eg wedding pictures!). 

The ones I tend to keep as edited DNG are travel pictures of places I may not visit again, or which might change significantly in the near future. 

[iRandom]

My solution to the dilemma that you are facing was to switch over to Photos and iCloud Photo Library with the originals stored on my Mac. I've found Photos + RAW Power + occasionally Pixelmator to be sufficient since I tend not to edit as much as I used to.