Workflow for separating RAWs & Derivatives

[Mary]

I have never following Peter's suggestion about keeping Raw files in a different folder from the derivatives. (BTW, I use LIghtroom on a MacPowerBook Pro) I suppose I fear that I will want to add more keywords or captions later and it would just be easier to have them side-by-side. Can anyone talk me out of this? I could change if it seemed easy.

 -- at what point do the DNGs or RAWs go their own way? AS on p135, I'm assuming I'd export the one I needed to work on as a derivative to that "derivative" folder, If guess I would do the Lightroom adjustments first  in the raw folder--  or would I dupe it and temporarily move it to the derivative folder so I can quickly archive the rest of the photos . (Which raises the question -- can you duplicate a file in LIghtroom? Hmm...I never tried that--would that be an export as an 'original'.), When I'm done with the job, I presume I'd move it to the blue raw  "archive"  and the derivatives to their own archive.

I also suppose that I'd have to be careful to keep the same or similar file names.

Sorry to still be asking these questions. I'm a slow learner...Mary


P.S. that's all the questions for today -- I've used up my quota in every category!

[johnbeardy]

It varies. Some people import as DNG and say goodbye to the RAWs at that point. My preference is to work on the RAWs until that I feel that shoot is "finished" - roughly the point at which I decide I'm not going to delete any more. I then create the DNGs, save metadata back to the RAWs and archive them.

It is easier to apply metadata later if derivatives - TIF and PSD files - are in subfolders with the RAWs/DNGs. I just prefer to separate them into their own buckets and folders in the same way as Peter. Having them in different folders doesn't really matter - at that later point I'll probably find the pictures not by going through the folders but by using a smart collection that might look for images shot in certain locations, or in a certain timeframe, or with xyz in any searchable metadata etc. So being in different folders isn't that much of a pain.

John

[Mary]

Smart Collection...that would make sense. Thanks. Mary