Author Topic: Daily workflow?  (Read 4172 times)

RobOK

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Daily workflow?
« on: December 02, 2019, 15:03:20 »
I have gone through a lull in my photography and I realize much of it comes from the time it takes on post processing. I was curious for people that have photography into their routine on a close to daily basis.... how do you do it?!

Since my photography tends to be at a family or friends event or travel, I tend to have large batches (for me, that is 200-400 or more if on travel). That takes some dedicated time to cull and process (I am pretty adept in LR).

Part of my problem too is I prefer to PP on my Mac mini connected to a big adjusted monitor, but much more convention is my mac book pro laptop with the small screen.

So I am curious for people that are in a daily (or at least multiple times a week) routine -- how many frames do you take and then do you just have a 15 minute block every day where you post process?

Cheers,
Rob.

ianwatson

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2019, 19:01:57 »
I’m not in that sort of routine but two young children do limit the time I can spend on post processing. Having a backlog does disincline me to take new photographs.

I have found that for culling photographs it helps to go through them quickly and make snap judgements. There are three categories: those that I immediately like and are marked for further work; obvious duds to be deleted; and everything else.

Events tend to be in conditions that don’t change much. So the first photograph that I like receives global processing. These settings can then be applied to the rest as a batch process in LR. Then perhaps a final look through the rest for minor adjustments.

Travel is harder because each keeper usually requires individual attention. I just tackle it as time permits.


Airy

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2019, 21:25:56 »
Two separate processes:
- quick & immediate (same day) PP of those few daily pics I want to share, using CNX-D which is installed on my (personal) work laptop;
- every fortnight, I "empty" the card using Lightroom and do some tagging. LR, its catalogue, and the large RAID storage are on the "fixed" 16 inch laptop.

Currently, I do no longer use LR for picture processing - only for tagging. I also realized that going through LR every day was too time-consuming.
Airy Magnien

Frode

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2019, 22:40:43 »
Two separate processes:
- quick & immediate (same day) PP of those few daily pics I want to share, using CNX-D which is installed on my (personal) work laptop;
- every fortnight, I "empty" the card using Lightroom and do some tagging. LR, its catalogue, and the large RAID storage are on the "fixed" 16 inch laptop.

Currently, I do no longer use LR for picture processing - only for tagging. I also realized that going through LR every day was too time-consuming.

Don’t you find Capture NX-D slow?

I like the colors I get when using NX-D, but I find it way to slow (was ok when I updated it to the latest version, but it became slower after a short usage...

If there is a workaround I’d love to hear about it.

RobOK

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2019, 22:45:54 »
Two separate processes:
- quick & immediate (same day) PP of those few daily pics I want to share, using CNX-D which is installed on my (personal) work laptop;
- every fortnight, I "empty" the card using Lightroom and do some tagging. LR, its catalogue, and the large RAID storage are on the "fixed" 16 inch laptop.

Currently, I do no longer use LR for picture processing - only for tagging. I also realized that going through LR every day was too time-consuming.

Thanks Airy, This is similar to me, sometimes I am using my laptop and sometimes my home computer. So do you ever sync the two up? It sounds like the PP happens on the temporary spot and the permanent spot doesn't have PP (you didn't use the words temporary and permanent -- I am trying to understand your storage flow). Lightroom got a little faster for culling with embedded previews. I had used PhotoMechanic for a while but with embedded previews I went back to LR.

Rob.



Thanks!

Airy

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2019, 08:06:48 »
Concerning the workflows:

They are separate. The two hardware chains are independent and not synced.

I put the processed jpegs on the cloud. The RAW files are stored on the RAID unit.

So far I did not care to save the CNX-D processing parameters anywhere. Most of my pics are snapshots, distributed to relatives or friends, often via social networks, so why care. I reckon that, if I were to have another edition of any picture, I'd redo the processing anyway, e.g. with the latest de-noising filter, color profile and sharpening matching the targeted media (print or screen) etc.

Anyway, my post-processing is generally light-handed. I try to get the picture right "on the spot", rather than using it at raw material. Most frequently, PP means slight cropping (change of proportions, esp. for vertical frames), white balance adjustment, and B&W conversion every now and then.

If I were to perform heavy processing, that would be with LR or Photoshop, not CNX-D. In such case, the parameters are stored on the RAID too, and the catalogue also gets backed up.

Concerning CNX-D performance:

it is very fast (display and correction) to medium fast (processing of output jpegs) on my laptop, which is a M$ Surface 4 with an SSD.
Windows & windows apps generally show a tendency to slowing down that looks like wilful, programmed obsolesence, even on computers with no connections and no config changes (example: the PC that I had been using for ten years for my virtual organ). However, with the help of the SSD, such ailments do not seem to appear. Microsoft will sure fix that in the near future ;)

<rant>
Sometimes there are cures. For instance, concerning the non-responsiveness of Windows: processor activity would show spikes resulting in loud & ugly cracking sounds from my virtual organ. Culprit is the SysMain service, the new name of an old service that is supposed to "improve user experience" by pre-loading the most frequently used apps, even when the user has absolutely no intention to put them at work. This service has been there for more than a decade. I'm not really surprized M$ was not able to make it behave properly. Killing it is, fortunately, no problem, as the Windows system won't retaliate. There are other unsolicited background activities that I'd like to silence. On the other hand, Onedrive sync used to work like a breeze on Windows 8, but its user interface got crippled on Win 8.1, and now synchronization no longer works properly on Win 10: it can be delayed for weeks with for apparent reason, and cannot even be forced. Delenda Microsoft.
</rant>
Airy Magnien

Hermann

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2019, 13:13:46 »
Culprit is the SysMain service, the new name of an old service that is supposed to "improve user experience" by pre-loading the most frequently used apps, even when the user has absolutely no intention to put them at work. This service has been there for more than a decade. I'm not really surprized M$ was not able to make it behave properly. Killing it is, fortunately, no problem, as the Windows system won't retaliate. There are other unsolicited background activities that I'd like to silence.

That's interesting. How do you kill the SysMain service? Nowadays with SSDs I don't see any need for preloading any apps.

Hermann

Airy

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2019, 22:28:29 »
Go to the task manager, click on the "services" tab, and just kill SysMain. I agree that this pre-loading idea sounds antiquated. I think I heard about it in the mid-nineties already.
Airy Magnien

Birna Rørslett

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2019, 17:14:44 »
Instead of "killing" SysMain, prevent it from starting in the first place. Computer Management > Services > SysMain (change startup from 'automatic' to disabled').

Of course, with computers running off SSD disk(s), preloading software is hardly useful at all. Just a waste of resources.


Airy

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2019, 07:33:47 »
Done, except than on Win10 French edition, it is near impossible to find the path to de-activating services at startup. Of course the search tool leads to nowhere. Tuning the startup apps is easy, tuning the startup services seems to be taboo.
Airy Magnien

Fons Baerken

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2019, 12:07:24 »
Done, except than on Win10 French edition, it is near impossible to find the path to de-activating services at startup. Of course the search tool leads to nowhere. Tuning the startup apps is easy, tuning the startup services seems to be taboo.

Services.msc in the run box

Birna Rørslett

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #11 on: December 05, 2019, 12:08:32 »
And one needs Admin access.

RobOK

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2019, 14:46:23 »
Somehow this thread turned into a Windows config discussion!!

I received my new Z6 now and a new XQD card reader to ready my SONY XQD card!  I assume wireless transfer from Nikon is not what it needs to be? My best experience with wireless has been Fuji, their app makes it pretty easy.

cheers,
Rob.

Birna Rørslett

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2019, 15:15:00 »
Use the card reader. Wireless transfer is a joke. Don't let it be played on you :)

Windows 10 can be a bad joke on its own as well.  No wonder people are discussing configuration solutions to get rid of the worst offenders and bloatware Microsoft has condescended to provide their OS with. From the get-go on my computers, win10 is only 50% of the speed compared to Win7 on the identical hardware. After tweaking they are more or less similar.

RobOK

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Re: Daily workflow?
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2019, 16:40:02 »
There is another thread here talking about Thom Hogan, and I do think a point he makes consistently is Nikon needs to think of our different workflows. There are sometimes that I want to take a picture (with a camera in my two hands), do a quick tweak on LR Mobile, and upload it to IG, FB, or of course NikonGear. But they don't ever seem to acknowledge or implement that use case.