Digital Asset Management – Part II

… or How to Cope in the Digital Age of Photography

We finished up our final scheduled workshop of the year, Lighthouses of the Outer Banks. It was another great group, and we got to welcome back some alumni/ae friends from past workshops. That’s one of the really neat things about our photo adventures; a number of our participants become personal friends, people with whom we keep in contact throughout the year.

I am typing this blog as we head back to the Outer Banks for a couple of private workshops. We look forward to finally meeting and working with these people whom I have started to get to know by phone and e-mail.

In my last blog, I wrote about the thinking, procedures, and steps I take to set up my system of handling my images. This is the first part of digital asset management. Are there other ways to do it? Absolutely. Each of us must find out what works for him/her. Even if you are an old hand at digital asset management, you may find some useful hints here. If you are new to this blog, I suggest starting with Part I of this article.

The images on this blog are eclectic. Some are “straight” images, some processed in Photoshop, some in Photomatix, and all with some element of Lightroom.

Importing Images onto Your Computer

OK, your folders are set up. You know your naming convention. Now it’s time to download those images, another way of saying “import them,” into your computer. Different programs have different dialogues, but the principles are the same:

• Select the location of your card reader as the source of your images to download.
• Browse to the folder you have already created for those images. Some people prefer to browse to the main folder (My Pictures, or some such) and create a new sub-folder for those images; I prefer not to do this, as I know I have not mistakenly duplicated a basic folder name by mistake. For example, in September, I had several folders starting with 20809 — 208091, 208092, 208093, etc. — so I don’t want to duplicate a project number (the last digit here) for my new images.
• Select “Convert to DNG” — in these settings, I do not select “Imbed RAW file” on the assumption that if it works for Peter Krogh, celebrated guru of The DAM Book, it should work just fine for me.
• Select “Save Copies to” or to the location where you keep your back-up files; I use the same folder name that I created above.
• Apply your metadata template (see below).
• Click on “Get Photos” or similar wording.
• CHUGGA-chugga-CHUGGA-chugga-CHUGGA-chugga … Time to get something to drink or a bite to eat. Make a few phone calls. It’ll take a while!

When you are sure that all your images have been downloaded and backed up, then, and only then, put your card into your camera and reformat it right away. That way, you won’t risk downloading all those images another time.

Metadata Templates

What? You don’t have a metadata template? Don’t worry. You’re not alone by a long stretch. They are easy to create. And if you are comfortable with your template, skip to the next section.

• Open up your Photoshop and create a 1” x 1” image at a resolution of 72 ppi.
• Save it as a jpg/jpeg (name it Metadata[YourInitials] in a Masters folder or someplace you can easily find down the road. My file is called MetadataMTP.jpg.
• Don’t close it.
• Go to File/File Info.., and a dialogue box will pop up with XMP categories listed on the left.
• Description
  • Copyright status: Copyrighted
  • Copyright Notice: Ours reads: © 2008 Zann and Pinkerton Photography. All Rights Reserved.
    N.B. There are only three legal forms of a copyright notice, and note the order of the elements:
    • © [Year] [Name] — © 2008 Margo Taussig Pinkerton
    • Copr. [Year] [Name] — Copr. 2008 Margo Taussig Pinkerton
    • Copyrighted [Year] [Name] — Copyrighted 2008 Margo Taussig Pinkerton
  • The All Rights Reserved lets viewers know that you have retained (kept) all rights to this image.
  • Copyright Info URL: this is where you type the page on your website (if any) that contains your copyright notice or statement. This will apply only to those of you who share or publish your images. For those who want an idea of what it might contain, go to http://www.BCphotoadventures.com/Copyright.php
    
• IPTC Contact
• Fill out almost all the fields here.
• Your name (Creator) should appear as it does on your copyright notice
• I don’t bother with the Title, on the assumption it would read: Chief, Cook, & Bottle Washer!
• IPTC Status/li>
  • Job Identifier: Here I put 208, as those are the first three digits of any folder I create in 2008.
• Do NOT press OK yet!
• In the upper-right-hand corner of the window, you will see a discreet little triangle that faces to the right; click on it.
• Select “Save Metadata Template”
• Choose a name such as Metadata[YourInitials] — mine reads MetadataMTP
• Click “Save”
• Click “OK” Your images are now on your computer, basic metadata imbedded, and all backed up.

Now what?

Cull, Cull, Cull

This is probably the hardest part of photography. As noted in Part I, there are two schools of thought, so I need not repeat them here. Whatever your approach, remember that out-of-focus photos are out of focus! They are not going to magically become sharp, so unless they are the only remembrance of a special moment or location, banish them from your computer!

The same applies to those way-way-way-too-dark or beyond-hope-too-light photos. They’ll just take up space. And we haven't even addressed those mega-pixels that really don't make a photograph. We should certainly experiment, and knowing that, we know that all experiments are not successes.

Renaming

After purging unwanted images from my computer, I am ready to rename my photos. Suggested naming conventions are discussed in Part I. It does bear repeating, however, that having a sequential name that ties in to the number of photos you have kept makes sense. If my folder contains 943 images, and my numbers go up to 952, something clearly is missing!

Post-Production

Now comes the fun part. It’s time to realize your vision in these photos. For those of you who have joined us in one of our photo adventures, you have heard such phrases as “Pre-visualize what you want,” “Don’t waste all those wonderful, expensive, little pixels you paid for,” “What attracted you to the scene,” and “Simplify and isolate.”

Did you succeed? Hopefully yes, in which case, post-production takes a lot less time.

Regardless of the program you used to import your photographs into a folder of your choosing on your computer, it is critical to understand what function the assorted programs serve. In all cases, they enable you to see the images in your various folders. All of these programs allow you to rename your photographs and add metadata such as job numbers, descriptions of photographs, key words, locations, etc. In all cases, if you uninstalled the programs, your images would still be on your computer. That said, there are important differences.

Since most people in our workshops are using Photoshop, Bridge, and Lightroom, I will address those, rather than Photoshop Elements or other, less-mainstream programs.

Bridge

This is very simply a browser. Just as you might use Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer to view the potpourri of information on the Internet, you can use Bridge to view the wide selection of images on your computer. It shows you thumbnails of the images you have in your various folders. You don’t need to “import” your photos into Bridge for it to see your photographs.

Lightroom

When you “import” images into Lightroom, you are really importing the capability of processing your images. This includes tweaking your files by giving a set of instructions to your photograph through the metadata. You crop in Lightroom; the instruction for that cropping gets added to the metadata for that photo. You burn or dodge, and those instructions are added to the metadata for that image. You play with the saturation, and you guessed it, those instructions get added to the photograph’s metadata.

All these instructions reside within Lightroom, so that you can call upon them again when you open up Lightroom the next time. If, however, you choose to open up the image in Photoshop, those directions are not yet permanently attached to the photo.

Every time I make an adjustment to a photograph in Lightroom, I save those directions to the file itself by clicking in the menu bar at the top on Photo/Update DNG Previews & Metadata, and when the little status bar in the upper left has finished, I click on Photo/Save Metadata to File. This is assuming that you are still in the Develop module. Don’t ask my why, but there is a slightly different path in the Library module.

When I want to update a whole slew of images at once, I head over to the Library module, since the Develop module seems to handle only one update at a time. As I tweak my photos, I give them a one-star rating. That way, I can select all those images that I have just tweaked, and click on Metadata/Update DNG Preview & Metadata, and again, when the little status bar says it has finished that task, click on Metadata/Save Metadata to File.

If you are careful about this, you will never lose all that work you have done on your images. If you use Bridge, you will see your tweaks reflected in the thumbnails. In any event, when you have done work on your images, don’t forget to back up those files!

In Part III, I’ll talk about Photoshop vs. Lightroom, and in Part IV, I’ll discuss managing your files so that you can find those photos you have taken over the years of your Great Aunt Minnie or all your vertical images of lighthouses taken across the country.

For more information on our workshops, go to our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures website.

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