for imaging and digital learning.
Managing your Digital Workflow
Digital photography has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. In fact, your digital camera, computer, printer, and an Internet connection comprise a virtual photo studio that opens up all kinds of creative opportunities. You can do more with your pictures than ever before.
To take full advantage of the benefits of digital photography you need to think about more than simply snapping pictures. You have to think in terms of a digital workflow.
Digital workflow is the entire imaging process, that is, every step involved in creating and managing your digital images. A simple digital workflow consists of the following steps:
- Taking pictures
- Transferring pictures
- Managing pictures
- Touching up and manipulating pictures
- Sharing pictures
- Archiving pictures
By establishing a consistent digital workflow and following the same steps every time, you'll save time and effort. You'll always have quality pictures that are be easy to find and you'll be able to go back and change them at a later date and share them in different ways.
Here are the things you have to do to establish a suitable digital workflow:
Taking pictures
Start with the best possible image. Set your camera to its highest resolution. Your pictures will take up more memory, but you'll be able to do more with them later. Even if you only want snapshots for now, a higher resolution ensures that your pictures will look good if you crop or enlarge them.
If you take a lot of pictures, get a bigger memory card. It's an affordable way to make the most of your camera.
For even better results, check out our other tutorials for tips on portraits, pet and action photography, nighttime shooting and other amazing techniques.
Transferring pictures
You can connect your camera directly to your computer or you can use an external card reader to transfer your pictures.
Before you begin, make sure you have installed the image management software that came with your camera or a third-party application. Also, make sure that your camera is switched off.
To transfer pictures directly from your camera, simply connect it to your computer's USB port with the supplied cable, then switch on the camera and follow the directions that appear on your screen.*
To use an external card reader, start by removing the memory card from your camera. Make sure that your card reader is plugged into your USB port. Insert the memory card into the slot and follow the directions on your screen.*
*Your computer may not be set up to automatically launch your photo management software when you insert a memory card or attach a camera and will therefore "see" your device as a removable disc. In such a case, follow the procedure you normally would to transfer files/images from a CD or DVD.
Managing pictures
Think of your computer as a filing cabinet. It contains all kinds of documents: letters, pictures, music, invoices, etc. Like a real filing cabinet, you'll want to keep it neatly ordered and organized. To do that, you'll need a good filing system.
A good filing system is one that makes sense to you and is easy to use. Your computer's operating system is a type of filing system, among other things and so is your image management software. Finally, your digital camera also has a filing system of it's own. With three different filing systems you can use, things can get pretty confusing. That's why it's important to choose one filing method and to stick to it.
One way to manage your pictures is to use a descriptive filing system.
One type of descriptive filing system is based on dates. Many image management applications automatically sort your pictures into folders by:
Unfortunately, these applications usually keep the file names generated by your camera, which vary from model to model, and usually consist of a confusing jumble of letters and numbers (e.g. DCN01234.jpg or 901588.jpg).
Filing solely by date is fine if you take very few pictures, but will make things very difficult as time passes and your photo library grows.
You can create a descriptive file system within your image management software by creating folders with names that describe their contents. You can then transfer your image files into these folders and, if you wish, rename your pictures so that they too have descriptive file names. For example:
This type of filing system makes it easier to find pictures, but can be very time consuming (especially if you're giving each picture a descriptive name)
Another easier way to categorize your pictures is to use tags or keywords. Most photo management applications come with a list of pre-defined keywords that you can use to catalogue your images. You can also add your own custom keywords to such a list, to better suit your needs. For example:
Built-in tags
Favourite |
Custom tags
Newfoundland |
 |
An image of you and your children on vacation in St. John's would be tagged:
Family, Vacation, Newfoundland.
A prized picture of your Aunt Vera would be:
Favourite, Family, Vera.
Your Daughter's game winning home run:
Family, Kids, Tina, Little League.
You can apply tags to single images or to groups of images. Once you've applied tags to all your pictures, you can do a simple search to find all the images that have one or more specific tabs. You can then arrange these images by folder or in any other way you choose.
It's best to tag your images as soon as you transfer them so you won't have to worry about having to organize them later on.
Because you can apply multiple tags or keywords to multiple images all at once, this method is a lot faster.
Finally, make sure to preview all your pictures in your image management application and remove any pictures that you don't want to keep: shots that are blurry, badly framed (e.g. the heads of your subjects are cut off), duplicates (or pictures that are too similar), etc. Digital photographs can add up quickly and gobble up space on your hard drive. Removing such pictures is a great way to keep your hard drive organized and up-to-date, on top of saving precious space.
Touching up and manipulating pictures
Most photo management applications also provide basic image correction and manipulation functions such as red-eye removal, exposure compensation, colour correction to touch up your pictures, as well as cropping and resizing tools, and B&W/sepia conversions. They also allow you to change the resolution, image quality and file size of your images so you can post them to web pages, e-mail them, or use them in a variety of applications. If you're not sure about touching up your images, bring your digital pictures to Black's (on a memory card, CD or DVD) and one of our expert associates can do the work for you.
Always keep your original pictures, along with your altered images, in case you don't like your changes or want to use your pictures in a different way at a later date.
Sharing pictures
There are many ways you can share your images. You can make inkjet prints at home; you can order high-quality photographic prints such as Black's VividPRINTS® through our On-line Photo Centre or at any of our Black's retail location; you can upload your pictures to an online photo album, send them by e-mail or create a CD/DVD slideshow to that can be viewed on television.
No matter how you choose to share your photographs, start by properly organizing them. That way, you can quickly and easily go back and find exactly the pictures you want to share without having to go through hundreds of images every time.
Archiving pictures
Your hard drive can store a lot of pictures, but they can take up a lot of space. To free space on your computer and to ensure that you don't lose your precious memories in the event of a hard disk crash, always back up your pictures to CD or DVD. This process is called backing up or archiving your images.
Most photo management applications let you burn a CD or DVD with the click of a mouse. You can back up your entire photo library, groups of pictures, or even a single image. If you've already grouped your images into folders, simply select the desired folders to be copied. You can also use keywords or tags to select pictures to be archived. Simply follow the directions on your screen or in your manual to burn a CD or a DVD.
As you did with your pictures, choose a filing system that makes sense to you. You can organize your discs by date, with each disc archiving pictures for a given year, month, week, or even day. Or can also organize discs by subject, with each disc containing a specific type of photograph. And remember, you can further group the contents of your back-up discs into folders to make it even easier to sort and find your photographs.
Remember to keep things simple and consistent from start to finish. That way, you'll always have great pictures to work with and you'll never have to worry about misplacing a precious memory again.
Tip:
DVDs can store a lot of information (4.7 - 8 Gigabytes depending on the type of DVD) while CDs store about 700 Megabytes of information, which is still an impressive amount but significantly less. Archive your entire photo library to DVD as a back-up, then archive specific types of photographs by subject to CD. This is a great way to keep your files in order, especially if you take a lot of pictures.
