renaming bracketed and hdr photos

[ryan]

I've been reading the book and forums, but I haven't seen anything to answer this question yet.

I've been getting into HDR photography. Normally, I have 3 shots - one at regular exposure, one at -2, and one at +2.  If you were to ingest these and rename them, how would the renaming/cataloging scheme work?

I may, for example, have hdr_001.cr2, hdr_001-1.cr2, and hdr_001-2.cr2, which tells me that these 2 were taken together and make up 3 exposures for 1 hdr image.  When I rename, add metadata, and catalog them, I want to keep these 3 files linked together, in case i want to make an HDR later or end up making multiple HDRs while playing with photomatix.

Any hints or tips on how to migrate HDR/bracketed shots into a DAM migration/workflow?
Thanks
Ryan

[johnbeardy]

I suppose you could rename files the way you suggest, so the related images would share a number which would be portable between DAM applications and also obvious in Explorer/Finder. Assuming you don't always take exactly 3 frames, how would you know how many pictures belong to that group? One idea might be to include "x of y" in the filenames - eg yymmdd_0123_bd where the b and d indicate the 2nd image of a set of 4 (I'm suggesting alphabetical as it looks more striking and allows for many more frames - eg for stitching).

That said, I just use a custom field in iView while in Lightroom I stack such images, and make them green so I have a visual cue that says don't delete this curiously exposed or composed picture.

John

[ryan]

So the directory structure you may keep something like

Original_01
-RAW_001_080816
--HDR
---ryan_080816_001_ac.dng
---ryan_080816_001_bc.dng
---ryan_080816_001_cc.dng

Archive
-DRV_001_080816
--ryan_080816_001HDR.tif

Sound about right?

Thanks,
Ryan

[johnbeardy]

Yes, it sounds logical and I may even adopt it myself. One downside, especially of using letters, would be how to do it. Renaming files manually would be a bore, but a script could handle it - in iView you'd have to select the related pictures, then just run the script. Numbers would be easier but in any case you're going to have to do renaming in a couple of passes. On the other hand, it'll always be easy to associate the finished tifs with the originals.

John

[ScottBuckel]

I have also been pondering how ot do this.  I wish that EM would allow you to stack the photos.  I have been using the filename of the first exposure (usually the one that was exposed "properly") and add HDR to the filename becoming Buckel_080818_1234_HDR.  (I also do the same with pano's, adding _pano to the filename of the dervivative file) The one thing that bothers me is that I have 3 to 5 exposures in EM that looked bad and it distracts my eye when I look at the catalog.  John your idea of labelling the images with a color sounds great - thanks for the suggestion!

Scott

[johnbeardy]

The problem with these sorts of pictures is sooner or later you'll see one on its own, think your exposure or composition must have been off, and promptly delete the middle element of a panoramic masterpiece. I don't use the colours for much else and green label really helps prevent accidents.

John

[ScottBuckel]

John - deleting one of the files has been my fear (actually I did once and fortunately I had the file on a back up drive so I recovered it).  I have been wondering how to do it and your concept is brilliant.  I will be doing this for now on!  I also realy use the color labels as I forget what they mean.

Thanks once again,

Scott

[peterkrogh]

I've been using color labels in Bridge or LR to tag pano sequences and HRD sequences.  I then assign a keyword to these photos.

For HDR, I'll only star the best exposure. I can see by the color label or the keywrd hat it's part of a sequence.

I agree that there need to be better tools for this.
Peter

[ScottBuckel]

Of late I have been playing more seriously with Lightroom for the initial part of my workflow and like it.  What I really like, and wish that Expression Media had, is the ability to stack images.  Version controls would be a great addition as well. 

I had been adding pano or hdr as a keyword so adding the labels was very easy.  I have started using a color label for HDR and a different one for panos and so far it is working well for me, as now I do not see an image and wonder why it is there.

John thanks for the idea!

Scott

[Chris Bishop]

For those that are interested - I've added another couple of letters. It now reads:
080816_004_acdf.dng
ac is one of three HDR images in a pano set, and it is the fourth of six in the pano.
Chris Bishop