Software workflow for employee photos

We are about to begin our employee photos, which we do every 5 years. We have about 1800 people to shoot, all in studio at the same location. What I would like to be able to do is:
Have a form available on a laptop for each person to enter personal information (Name, Rank and hire date), then import that info into the medadata with their portrait. Then I would like to have the photos available for them view on the laptop and pick which photo they want to use for their official portrait. After they pick their portrait we would export the selected photo to our various storage sites.

We have access to LR and the Canon Software that came with our 6D cameras, will either of those work for this or is there something else out there that would do a better job?

Any suggestions on how to get this done?

With a competent assistant, Lightroom could do it approximately as you describe. With 1800 employees, I wouldn't try to make it a one-person job.

Shoot tethered, optionally apply a develop preset to each photo as it's imported. After the photos import from the tether cable, have the assistant help the employee pick their selection, and mark it with a star rating, white pick flag, or color label.

You can continue to shoot the next employee while the assistant and the previous employee are selecting.


The only thing I'm not sure about is the metadata entry. That might be clumsy in Lightroom, but I'm not sure as I've never done it.

You (rather, the assistant) might be able to rename the selected photo, putting the details in the filename instead of (or in addition to) the metadata.

You should be able to do this in lightroom- see the tutorial below.

https://blogs.adobe.co​m …-workflow-with-lightroom/

You can certainly edit the exif in LR, but I am just not sure if you can do it while LR is running in tethered mode. You should do a test before the event.

An alternative would be to shoot tethered using LR (to transfer shots to computer) while also running another image viewing packages that could edit the exif.

I would probably use Lightroom for the photo handling, but Not to tether off of. I haven't played around with it enough to be sure yet, but from what I have done so far I'm thinking that my first option would be to reach for a solution which pulled images from the camera and just dropped them into a folder. Then whoever is working the data entry would pull the latest photos out of the folder as needed, keyword and rate/cull/flag as needed.

Getting a multi monitor setup for this would also be handy, personally I would be tempted to go with 3 screens: a large screen for the subject to review the photos 'over the shoulder' as the tech is sorting them, one for the main Lightroom window and another to watch the drop folder to keep an eye on it and make sure things are actually dropping as expected.

You want 1800 people to get back to you with their choice?
Good luck with that!!!!

I would leave that step out - you are the photographer.
You make the decision.

You are going to from here to eternity waiting to get 1800 replies, let alone the logistics of physically dealing with that many communications.

AceCo55 wrote in post #17772861
You want 1800 people to get back to you with their choice?
Good luck with that!!!!

I would leave that step out - you are the photographer.
You make the decision.

You are going to from here to eternity waiting to get 1800 replies, let alone the logistics of physically dealing with that many communications.

You get the reply before they leave the room... And you don't ask "which one", you ask "Do you see any problems with any of these"?

ShotByTom wrote in post #17771980
We are about to begin our employee photos, which we do every 5 years. We have about 1800 people to shoot, all in studio at the same location. What I would like to be able to do is:
Have a form available on a laptop for each person to enter personal information (Name, Rank and hire date), then import that info into the medadata with their portrait. Then I would like to have the photos available for them view on the laptop and pick which photo they want to use for their official portrait. After they pick their portrait we would export the selected photo to our various storage sites.

We have access to LR and the Canon Software that came with our 6D cameras, will either of those work for this or is there something else out there that would do a better job?

Any suggestions on how to get this done?

You say you do it every five years, how did you do it in the past?

Luckless wrote in post #17772673
I would probably use Lightroom for the photo handling, but Not to tether off of. I haven't played around with it enough to be sure yet, but from what I have done so far I'm thinking that my first option would be to reach for a solution which pulled images from the camera and just dropped them into a folder.

That is exactly what shooting tethered with LR does.

Last time I used LR to tether a camera it interfered with the general UI in a manner that I would have found distracting to be working with while actually shooting. It is possible I was in a different setting mode than you are talking about, but photos were automatically being drawn in to Lightroom as imports. Worked great for when I was shooting then going to the computer to deal with things, but did not look like it would work smoothly for having someone using the computer while someone else was capturing photos.

Yes, that is exactly what shooting tethered is supposed to do. You are shooting, it is copying the image to your computer.

john crossley wrote in post #17773031
You say you do it every five years, how did you do it in the past?

We switched to digital in 2006 so we have only gone through the process of photographing everyone one time. The last time we didn't have any software, we just took the photographs and loaded them onto the server. No one had access to the photos except the administrators. Now, we have a new software storage package that can be sorted and searched. So we want to be able to load data with the photos so people can go back later and search for and sort photos.

As far as selecting the photos, they would do that as soon as they are finished and before they leave.

Luckless wrote in post #17773025
You get the reply before they leave the room... And you don't ask "which one", you ask "Do you see any problems with any of these"?

Aaaaaagh ... my bad.
I apologise - I misinterpreted what was written in post #1

Please ignore this stupid fool and carry on.