Organizing Your Photos & Workflow

rkriveraphotography-products-prints_002.jpg
_RKR7112.jpg

PHOTO CHALLENGE | Create folders for each month of the year in an external hard drive (or on your computer, thumb drive, or cloud, if you must). Within each month create a folder for RAW images and a folder for JPEG images.

Now go to Lightroom and Export photos you’ve already edited to the appropriate month in which they were taken (JPEG folder). You can also Export the original file if they haven’t been backed up yet (to the RAW folder).

There are some tried-and-true things that create a unified system to keep your work as a photographer put together and accessible. I firmly believe that ease of access and a streamlined process make you a better photographer. From shooting with intention to having folders to categorize your photo shoots, you’ll find that you spend less time dealing with how to manage your digital workflow and more time focusing on what’s important.

  • External Hard-Drive

  • RAW & JPEG Folders

  • Year, Month, Event Folders

  • Collections and/or Folders in Lightroom

  • Regularly Editing

  • Saving & Backing Up

After taking photos on your camera, copy all of the RAW files from the memory card to an external hard drive with a folder that further breaks down to a specific month and event 2020 > JUNE > Event Name (if applicable) > RAW. You’ll also make a folder next to the RAW one for JPEG images when you finish editing.

Now either from your external hard drive or the memory card, import photos to Lightroom and save those photos to a Collection or Folder (you’ll see this option on the tab on the right. Those photos will then be saved in a folder on your computer or hard drive (wherever you designate it to go) in addition to the RAW files you originally backed up. Now if anything happens to one of those folders, you have a second copy of the original files for safekeeping.

When you’ve edited your images, you can now export an edited JPEG to that same folder you created on your external hard drive. You can select this when the Export screen pops up in Lightroom. Once the export is complete, delete them from your Lightroom Collection or Folder to free up that space and keep your Lightroom organized for future photos.