Every photographer actually has two workflows to manage: The treatments for the physical media your images are stored on and also the workflow related to image processing. Today we’ll go over basic storage workflow and cover image processing in the next installment. Important elements of one's digital processing workflow is going to be dictated by your image manipulation program, but physical storage will depend on how well you’re organized.

It’s good to get into a routine for workflow management that includes on / off site backups. I believe in making backups before moving them into my image manipulation programs. This way easily accidentally save over a graphic, the original image can still be recovered.

Starting these habits on day one when you're getting a brand new camera will prevent losing those first couple of photos out of your new camera or having your pictures scattered around folders on your computer.

There isn't any excuse for not having good backups of your images. Even with the flooding in Thailand driving up hard disk prices, back up storage is still cheap by historical standards. You may get external drives similar to this Buffalo MiniStation Stealth 1 TB backup drives for approximately $130.00. I love these because they’re an easy task to store and don’t need external power. For your price you may get two and a replica of your backup files off page.

Another good practice is encrypting your files when stored. Programs like TrueCrypt are free and fantastically secure, a sad fact you’d discover should you ever lose your encryption password. That way if someone else steals your backup drive they don’t obtain a free copy of work. Do invest time to see the directions before encrypting volumes or drives.

RAW and JPEG

I shoot RAW + JPEG on my camera even though it burns with the card space faster. When dumping the charge card, job you are making a permanent backup with the RAW files by copying these to a different folder that’s automatically supported. So, I personally end up having three copies of every image. The RAW image, a replica from the RAW image on the separate drive, along with a full-sized JPEG.

Rotating Backup Drives

I keep one backup drive off site and rotate that and my household backup drive once a week. I’ve got my system create so if there was a fire or any other emergency, all I'd have to do is grab the backup drives off my desk. For the worst situation, I’d lose a week’s worth of work and many types of the significant copies of images I had been editing. If my backup drives ever got stolen, the thieves could either try to hack my encryption for Ten or fifteen years or reformat the drives.

Be mindful of Cloud Storage

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