Permanent Edited Images - File Type, Organization?

I'm a serious hobbyist in the very early stages of establishing a workflow and organization system with Lightroom. I don't do anything commercial with my photos, purely pleasure.

One consideration I'm struggling with is what to do with the images after I've finished editing them with Lightroom and/or PSE. Obviously I need a permanent filing system of some sort and what I'm struggling with is making the files easy to locate and use by family members, should I no longer be around to do it for them! (This is what happens to you when old age starts to creep in... )

i.e. - How are other hobbyists handling their edited, finished images in terms of organization of their files? (Exporting from Lightroom to subject folders for example?) I assume you don't keep the working files AND another set of permanent files both in lightroom...

- Which file type is the best to use for permanent image files, again thinking of my family who may want to review and print them, or have someone else do it for them - .tiff?

Presently:
1. I download my original RAW files by date to an external drive; these are culled and copied to a second external drive as the backup;
2. I'm trialing copying them to a 2nd folder by subject category & date as the next step;
3. I then import the subject files into Lightroom by referencing them where they are on the external drive to work on them;
4. Permanent filing should come next after my editing is finished - what to do???

I haven't been able to reach any conclusions from the information already on the forum which seems appropriately geared to photographers and high volumes. Keeping it simple but effective is where I'm trying to go. Really looking forward to your ideas and personal experience - thanks so much !!

Like you I struggle with how to manage my files. All of the books written for storage and organization seem to be written towards pros whom shoot for events of some kind. I am also a hobbyist whom shoots mostly family shots with a few "other" things mixed in when I can. Here is my workflow, although I don't know if it helps you or not, it seems to work for me.

1. Import to Lightroom, copying from the card to a folder titled "To Be Sorted" organized by date captured (2007/June 19 for example). I also convert to DNG and copy the originals during import to a folder titled "Needing Backup". This folder gets written to DVD when I reach ~4 GB.
2. Edit in LR. I do as much in LR as possible and very little, if any, in PS so I don't have multiple copies of each file to deal with. But if I do send to PS I always right click and choose Edit in CS2, stack with original. This way when the main file gets moved to another folder the edited version goes too.
3. Now depending on what the image is for my workflow splits a bit. If I am creating an image for web I export to a folder titled "Images for Website", open in CS2 for some sharpening and save in the same folder. If it is for print I export to a folder titled "Print File" with a subfolder for the date or event or some descriptive text, open in CS2 for sharpening adn converting to my printer's profile. These print file images are one shots for me. Since I can recreate the file very easily with LR I chuck these after I get my prints. Since the web images are so small I keep them and use them as a screen saver as well.
4. I backup every night to an external drive my Lightroom database and weekly my entire Photos HDD (I might do this more frequently if I have uploaded a lot of images.

So, basically if someone wants to use my pics they better figure out Lightroom.

Exactly my reason for the questions! It just might be easier to teach one of my daughters...

Thanks for taking the time to give me your organization Mike. I like the idea of the 4 GB folder for backing up to DVD and the stacking feature sounds really good; I just read up on it and will try out the virtual copy thing right away.

I have two years of images to put through Lightroom so it's going to be awhile getting organized. I've never catalogued or tagged anything before, just edited pics for a specific purpose. I can see now why it's always said to get it right when you are taking the pictures!

Hopefully there will be more ideas on permanent files, but it really helps to know I'm kinda on the right track. Like you I don't want to complicate it all either.

Thanks again, it is much appreciated!

Of course, if in LR you write your changes to .dng (or .xmp), if anyone opens the image in Photoshop CS3+, Photoshop Elements 5.0+ they should see your lightroom edits, correct?

On your backups, or your main pictures folder, you could always create a README.txt file to guide people on which software is prefered for viewing your images. That's the low-tech way to do it.

Very clever David - a Readme file is a great simple idea.

Any changes I do in Lightroom right now do indeed show up in Elements, if I export the images from Lightroom. I'm not writing to .dng or .xmp yet as I'm not fully understanding either one.

- are .dng files basically the same thing as RAW files (CR2) ?

- does the .xmp hold the instructions for the edits made in Lightroom, in addition to the metadata?

- I don't import or copy my pictures into Lightroom so I'll have to look at that as well with respect to .dng/.xmp.

I'll have to investigate this further as it seems like it may be the answer once I understand it more fully. I really want to stay within Lightroom as much as possible and not have a ga-zillion sets of the same folders for different purposes.

Thanks for the new thoughts...

Correct, they are (basically) the same as a RAW file. The unadjusted RAW data would be there, and the edits are all recorded as metadata. If you choos the option to export to .xmp sidecar files, it will actually write the edits into the metadata space of your .jpg, .tiff, and .dng files, and just create .xmp for camera's own RAW files, (like .cr2). All without physically exporting the image to a seperate image file.

So if you were to open one of those .jpegs in Elements 5.0 your edits should show up there. But if you were to open the same image in Windows Explorer, it would ignore those metadata edits, and show your original untouched image. (I've never tried this out in practice.)

I'll let Mike or someone more knowledgable point you towards further details on these issues... (I'm still learning myself, here!)

Your answers really help David, thanks.

I have Martin Evening's Lightroom Book; it's excellent, there's just so much to absorb.

plbb wrote in post #3407999
Very clever David - a Readme file is a great simple idea.

Any changes I do in Lightroom right now do indeed show up in Elements, if I export the images from Lightroom. I'm not writing to .dng or .xmp yet as I'm not fully understanding either one.

Yes a very good idea, the Readme file. I have used it elsewhere but not with my photos.

Yes. DNG is a digital negative. It is an open format created by Adobe. The reasoning behind it is that each camera manufacturer was creating proprietary RAW formats and Adobe wants a standard. Some believe that DNG is the way to go, while others are waiting for more people to adopt it first.

Yes.

Sure you do. In order for Lightroom to know about your images you MUST Import them into your Library. But you don't have to copy them. Your workflow has already placed them onto your computer before you open LR. I choose to have LR do the copying for me rather than copy the files manually. I simply like the way LR places my files in to folders by date and gets rid of Canon's file structure.

Absolutely. I want to do everything in LR that is possible. Right now I still have to use CS2 for some edits but LR does a big chunk of my workflow. I have been showing my wife what to do in LR and she is graspng the concept pretty well, even importing, exporting and uploading to our website in about a week's time.

I've now changed to importing my images with "import copy and convert to .dng"

I still haven't got my head around .dng and .xmp but I'll continue to pursue that until I do.... in the meantime, should I also have "Automatically write changes into XMP" activated or does using .dng make that unnecessary?

So sorry - I just don't get the file(s) side of most any program. So I want to be set up most advantageously until I understand this xmp stuff.

Thanks so much!

plbb wrote in post #3437273
I've now changed to importing my images with "import copy and convert to .dng"

I still haven't got my head around .dng and .xmp but I'll continue to pursue that until I do.... in the meantime, should I also have "Automatically write changes into XMP" activated or does using .dng make that unnecessary?

So sorry - I just don't get the file(s) side of most any program. So I want to be set up most advantageously until I understand this xmp stuff.

Thanks so much!

As I understand it changes to the files will only be written to the file if you trun on Auto Write XMP or by choosing Write edits to XMP (something like that from one of the drop down menus, I forget exactly).

Auto writing supposedly slows down LR though because each instruction has to be written when applied to the photo. You would be better off to do the latter when you are done with a session IMO.

Thanks Mike, I was hoping you were around.

Makes sense, LR is slow enough as it is.

Do you do routinely write your changes to XMP? What is the worst thing that could happen with my images if I don't do this ? (I guess I'm asking if I'm being paranoid about .xmp and metadata and running on overkill - and you are kindly not wanting to tell me that. Please do if that is the case!! )

plbb wrote in post #3437454
Thanks Mike, I was hoping you were around.


Makes sense, LR is slow enough as it is.

Do you do routinely write your changes to XMP? What is the worst thing that could happen with my images if I don't do this ? (I guess I'm asking if I'm being paranoid about .xmp and metadata and running on overkill - and you are kindly not wanting to tell me that. Please do if that is the case!! )

The worst thing that could happen is that you lose all your edits. I don't write my changes to the files, but I do backup my Library every day. I have had a corrupt Library and lost a days worth of edits. Luckily they were not important edits.

And I don't think you can be too paranoid about any of this.

So when I write the edits to XMP, does that mean that that metadata is now stored with the image file on my system, as well as in the LR database files?

In other words, if I open that image outside of Lightroom (say with photoshop elements), it will display showing any edits I made to exposure, WB etc ?

Edit: It dawned on me that I can experiment with a few images myself to see what actually happens and answer my own questions - not to mention better understanding what I'm reading to understand XMP. So that's what I'm doing and I'm already surprised at the results - not at all what I thought.

plbb wrote in post #3437932
So when I write the edits to XMP, does that mean that that metadata is now stored with the image file on my system, as well as in the LR database files?

In other words, if I open that image outside of Lightroom (say with photoshop elements), it will display showing any edits I made to exposure, WB etc ?

Edit: It dawned on me that I can experiment with a few images myself to see what actually happens and answer my own questions - not to mention better understanding what I'm reading to understand XMP. So that's what I'm doing and I'm already surprised at the results - not at all what I thought.

My guess is that you already figured out that when you wrote the changes to XMP they still exist in the Library. And depending on what program uyou use to view the files after writing the XMP your results will vary. You see not all of the changes are universal. Changes in LR are not the same as changes in DPP for example. So the only way all of the changes will be visible is if you use a program that can read the LR changes, like CS3 or PSE5 with ACR 4.1.