One of the most important things to consider in the digital age is your digital workflow with your images from shooting, to editing to back-ups and storing your images.  Everybody has a different system that works for them, and I am not exception – this is what works for me.

Download images to computer – I put these into an “Ingest” Folder that is in my dropbox, this means it will then be available on both my desktop and laptop computers as well as stored off-site. I have found the most effective way for me to do this is using Photo Mechanic – it is fast and quick to give previews (my desktop computer also has an external drive for back ups)

Sort Images – At this stage I go through and delete the obviously unusable images – (blurry, out of focus, bad composition etc).  I do this in photo mechanic as well.

Edit Images – Then to the exciting part, making the images shine.  I import the remaining images into Lightroom by syncing my ingest folder, renaming, keywording and editing the images before exporting the completed images to the appropriate folder (also in dropbox).  If further edits are needed in Photoshop I go on to do that after the export.

Archive Images – Once I have finished with my raw files I archive them.  I never really got into working with the date system for finding images later, so I like to archive them in categories. I have folders, some with sub folders, for things like food, places, family, events and jobs.  My archives are on my desktop computer, backed up on the external hard drive as well as linked in dropbox.

I have found this the easiest system for me, everything is automated and I do not have to remember to do any backups and I have backups of all my main photos accessible online from any location.  The only downside of this system is if you travel a lot.  But for someone who is based in one location this system works for me.