Browser Workflow

This is the challenge. How do I get to see the images in my project? This is the fundamental purpose of any management system, it’s the main driving goal. To harken back to my car analogies of previous books (stop groaning), if it don’t take you to the store, it ain’t much of a car. There’s a lot of byproduct associated with the process. In my car, going to the store, I can listen to Beethoven. This is nice. If it takes too long, or doesn’t take me there at all, however, I can’t really say it’s a successful car.

Browsers are the most basic attempt to address the challenge. They look at a folder and generate thumbnail files that are little, fast files so they can display the contents of the folder quickly, without having to tie up processing by handling full-sized files. The images you view in them are proxy-images. They are simply small representatives of the real files. They allow you to view, sort, move, delete, rank and do a whole host of other things, even apply adjustments, depending on their level of sophistication. Adobe Bridge is an extremely powerful Browser.

Importing Files

The techniques I’ve taught using Bridge are really pretty simple. I suggest building a directory structure outside of Bridge, in the Finder on an Apple system, in Windows Explorer on the PC side. Once that’s built, you move your files into that structure. Bridge, since it’s very powerful, can actually do that, too. In Bridge I can make new folders and move files into them. I can copy, move and delete files using Bridge.

When the files are in a folder, and Bridge is looking at the folder, the first thing it’s going to do is generate thumbnail images. Depending on the size of your originals, this is processor intensive and can be pretty time-consuming. It will chunk away on all the files in the folder. For this reason, I like to keep the numbers of files in each folder down… rather than putting everything into one folder. This is pretty much the extent of the Import process in most file browsers.

Sorting and Rating

Once the previews are processed, we have remarkable rating and sorting tools available in almost any browser system. We can give the files a hierarchical rating of stars or numbers, a color tag, metadata tags and keywords, and then sort by those criteria. Once we have sorted, we can move or copy the files into other folders in out project architecture.

Purposing Files

The Project architecture is about what files are going to be used for what projects. I may do a quick sort to hide my rejects. (I never delete anything… I just hide it from view, especially the client’s view.) I then will copy files into folders for a web project, a show, and a portfolio project, for example. I have protected the original file, and have made copies into separate destinations, where I will process and make more copies and versions, specific to the project.

This workflow is based on the concept that I’m propagating projects from source files, much as I made prints from negatives in the darkroom. I have my master negative, I print for the 3 purposes I shot for, and file those prints in their own folders.

Backup and Archive

First, Backup and Archive are two different things. Backup is done frequently, on a daily or weekly basis, and the purpose is to protect your day-to-day work. Archiving is saving what you want to keep for a really long time, maybe for future generations.

Backing up in the Browser model is tricky… you have to consider the physical size of the number of propagated images, the versions, the original files, and keeping track of what you’ve worked on, what’s been changed, if you’re confident that you want to keep that newest generation or preserve the previous version, and what, where and how you’ve backed up. This is no easy or simple task, and some pretty incredible software has been developed to address many, if not all of these issues.

The Browser model solves a really huge problem I’ve always had with sheets of film. That is, how can I make a faithful duplicate of my unique image. It creates the logical resulting problem. How do I manage all of these propagating duplicates? Another problem of this model is the file-size/processing time associated with generating all those thumbs. One of the attractive things about the Browser model, though, is its simplicity. This is a 1964 VW Bug sort of solution. It’s simple, basic, reliable and easy to troubleshoot. …not much on amenities, though. Adobe’s LightRoom, at this point, seems like a very fully evolved version of the model. It’s fast, efficient, and even gives us adjustment capabilities, but it’s the same model that propagates project-based files.

-Ted Dillard

(Excertped from the draft "Photographic Project Management:
Data Management Solutions for Photography Projects)