How do you manage your Digital Assets ?

[Take2]

All the kids (ahem... I mean "pros") nowadays are shooting digital.

Terrific!! right? I mean...

• Shoot your images
• Import to Lightroom/Media-Pro/Aperture
• Make your edits/adjustments
• Output "conventionally"

That's dandy, if your workflow consists essentially of digital capture and the neo-convention of "just get'em out!". But what if you're an old fart like me? Admittedly, I've taken quite well to making photographs with my new-and-lovely Nikon D7000. But at the same time, I love shooting film - my digital workflow evolved through migration from the wet darkroom. Anyone who has spent some time making fine art prints the traditional route knows all too well there's no "just get'em out" in that realm.

My personal workflow is a tedious one. I scan my film on any of two dedicated film scanners (and more recently, wet mount scanning) and spend hours retouching and adjusting each image in photoshop before outputting to inkjet print or (hopefully soon!) digital negatives for contact printing. With scans ranging from 50-800mb, Lightroom really isn't a candidate for me. I use ACR for RAW images captured on the Nikon D7000, but found it quite useless with scans.

I've been using Adobe Bridge to manually manage my digital assets and I wonder what other people do, which is my reason for starting this thread. I'd love to hear about how you capture and manage your images, as I've learned that these are two sides of the same coin.

 

[Danielle]

I'd be scanning them through photoshop (whatever version) then they should pop up in lightroom for me too.

I still have to set up a hybrid workflow, but that's what I'd most likely be doing with at least some images from various formats. Then off to a pro lab for printing on a lambda if applicable.

Not sure you can say all pro's are using digital. Well at least not necessarily full time digital. Fine art for instance is staying predominantly film based, with good reason (B&W for one).

Workflow wise as of this last weekend I got a wake up call. I lost a hard disk and a number of hours work.

 

[Aristophanes]

No EXIF is the major pain. I let a lab do my scans.

 

[Take2]

Danielle: by "scanning through photoshop" I take it you mean you're using the Twain-import function? I haven't touched that in so many years I don't even know it's there anymore! If memory serves, that would bring up the scanner driver.

I scan exclusively through Vuescan Pro - in my opinion the best and only remaining desktop scanning software. Over the years I've typically scanned into raster image formats (TIFF, JPEG, etc) but as of late I'm learning more about scanning in RAW as that seems to allow maximum flexibility and possibly making use of RAW image management software (Aperture, LR, etc) for cataloging. I virtually never 'edit' images in LR or equivalent as these are just too limited for my taste.

As for outsourcing scanning to labs, sadly that's really the way it seems to be going nowadays as fewer-or-no native film scanners are being manufactured for purchase.