This is my current solution for processing my digital negatives after shooting a wedding or event.

I use Apple Aperture 3. I’ve tried a number of different solutions for RAW image processing including Bridge, Photo Mechanic, Bibble Pro etc and I keep coming back to Aperture. I’m going to share my workflow today mainly as notes to keep myself honest but hopefully someone else will be interested too.

Aperture is a database-based photo management/editing and processing solution available from Apple. It’s quite inexpensive for all of its features and interfaces nicely with Photoshop CSx.

It’s $159 which is a steal. Please buy it from B&H. B&H rocks. Buy it here.

When I shoot a wedding I get a lot of RAW files. I shoot in RAW. Some people shoot in JPEG which is fine, but I prefer my masters to be loseless. To each his own.

First step when I get back from a wedding is to import the images.

My workflow is super simple and it needs to be because with 30,000 images in my library currently, a complicated management system would make my life hard. (I have 10k images from other programs and personal photo-sessions that I’m currently working on importing etc but those are on the non-paid-gig backburner.

Basic Workflow…

I have folders for years. Anytime I shoot in a given year the images will be stored in the year’s folder in projects (we’ll get  to that).

Here is my basic file structure. I started shooting non-personal things in 2009, so anything before that (which is currently not as organized as it should) is in the Older Images Folder sorted by category.

Within the 2010 folder I have 3 subfolders for: ‘Weddings’, ‘Product Shots’ and ‘Other Photo Shoots’.

I’m now ready to import the new shoot I just completed. I have a very specific naming structure that I use to make sure I can find the images. This naming structure is embedded in ALL THE IMAGES, not just the folder. In two years IMG_0001.CR2 will mean NOTHING. BUT… 2010_MONTH_DAY_BRIDE_GROOM_0001.CR2 will.

I import my images using the import command (command-i) and at this point I add in keywords and info that will help the database and my brain catalog the images.

This is SUPER IMPORTANT when you import your images. This will add the info to the Metadata of each image. I put in a brief caption showing the names of the bride/groom and three import keywords:

1. Type of shoot (in this case wedding)
2. Names of Bride/Groom (for easy searching later)
3. Location

I then use the city, state, country and add a copyright to each of my images.

It’s now also important to rename the files as they are being ingested by aperture with the naming structure:

YEAR_MONTH_DAY_BRIDEGROOM

with index. This will name all of the images with the important info and if anything gets lost or misplaced it’s easy to see what’s going on with the images at a later date.

My aperture library lives on my Multi-Terabyte raid array (raid 5) which is backed up to another hard drive that gets locked into my safe. I need to get an offsite backup sooner than later. I suspect what I will do is get another RAID 1 hard drive and backup my library and keep that backup at a remote location. You need 3 versions of a file otherwise it’s not truly backed up.

Master Images are Sacred.

Don’t mess with the masters after you’ve imported them. Aperture 3 does a great job with this, all editing is non-destructive. All edits and improvements are simply instruction that Aperture does to the master image when it is exported for my blog, JPEG-proof/high-res images for the clients, or facebook/flickr.

The next step in the process after importing the raw files is to catalog, mark, rate and organize the images into albums, books, smart Projects, light tables within the large project. Think of this as a funnel…start with your 1000 images for example in a wedding and mark the ones that you like with a star system. I think 5 stars is too much. I use the following:

3 Stars is blog-worth (best of the best).

2 Stars is client-worthy (images for the high-res JPEG export).

1 Star is good but revisit after looking at all images (example 5 images of the same scene, are marked with 1 star and then re-examened to determine the best of the series).

0 Stars for not bad or good but pass for now.

Reject for problem images (out of focus, eyes closed, etc) – 9 key…

In Aperture 3 the 1,2,3 keys are for 1,2,3 stars. Rejected images are given with a 9. This is first step, snap through the images and rate them all. Turn on ‘Quick Preview’ –  far right corner will turn yellow, this will snap through the images quicker.

A hot key that I use  all the time is the ‘V’, this switches the view from thumbnails, filmstrip and detail.

Smart Albums Rock.

The first thing I do when I’m processing a wedding is the blog post. This gets the bride/groom excited about the images and gives them and my readers instant gratification. I create a new smart album and call it ‘Blog’ I then have the filter for the Smart Album be any images that are ranked with 3 stars (see above). As I snap through the images this album quickly gets populated. I do the same of the 2/3 star images (a smart album of images >= 2 stars) for the JPEG export (this is my hand-picked, ‘best’ images from the wedding.

Let’s keep the funnel metaphor going…

Next step is to provide coarse color correction.

Aperture makes this pretty easy with the stamp tool. If you have a white-balance photo (either with a gray card or a spyder-cube) you can lift the adjustments and then stamp them to another image. This is great.

Speaking of spyder-cube. This is coming in the mail later this week. I just shot this wedding with very complicated indoor mixed lighting, the spyder cube will help. My plan is to get a small nano-stand and keep the spyder cube ready to put into a white-balance photo. I’ll have a mini-review coming on that pretty soon with examples.

Buy the Spyder-Cube from B&H – it’s only 50 bucks!

The expanded meta-data function is very nice too. It lets you see all the EXIF data/ lens used/ etc when you are editing a photo:

It doesn’t take up a lot of room but is very helpful for looking at the image you are working on. It give you the ISO, f-stop, shutter speed, EV, MM of lens, stars, lens info and caption. Very useful!

A final thing that I do is color-shifting and blog-image retouching in photoshop. You can set up PS to be an ‘external’ editor for aperture. This is super helpful for moving a 3-star image in or out of the project.

SHIFT-COMMAND-O opens it in photoshop (making a copy of the image as a psd!) very import, don’t mess with your master images because photoshop IS DESTRUCTIVE!!!

The photo will open up in photoshop with the basic adjustments/whitebalance I’ve made in Aperture. I can then do my colorshifting/tweaking retouching and save the file back into Aperture.

Aperture makes a copy first of the file from the RAW file, which it has processed, and turns it into a psd file which you can then edit in photoshop and save back into aperture to arrange in albums, export for blogs, keyword etc.

This is the better way to do it because you don’t want to have so many version, a blog version an export version, print etc. Keep everything organized in Aperture 3, do you critical editing and retouching on photoshop and then keep Aperture for the final arranging.

Aperture and Photoshop play very nicely!

Have Fun!