reft

This topic is a tough one to make a short response to.

Different from already posted above:

I backup the originals more, 3 copies, two on CDROM and one on older flash cards that are slower that what is in the camera, or a USB thumb drive.

I'm shooting only raw now, gave up on raw+JPG because the JPGs never got used.

Most of my final output is usually printed.

I'm Using Bridge (Br) and mostly Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) for raw development and Photoshop (Ps) for most images. Lightroom (Lr) installed, but not set up yet. Most if not all of the below would work with Lr. Sometimes use the camera manufacturer software, and am thinking about DxO (Optics Pro 9 and Viewpoint 2.)

After backup, images are loaded from the card to '[My ]Pictures/Incoming/YYMMDD-Topic' (In Lr, 'Incoming' could be a separate database that can be merged in to a main one later, like the 'field' one mentioned in the post above.)

The below is a two step rating/selection process. It saves time later, since fewer images make it into ACR or Ps for individualized processing.

Part 1 - Rating and culling images
Check Output First
This can't be emphasized enough: Before rating images, make sure your final output will be ok. If you are printing on paper, grab one good random image and print it. If the printed version doesn't look like it's on the screen, you can't properly evaluate the images on-screen will waste a lot of time later trying to make it print right. If it's way off, you may even reject some images that would printed ok, and vice versa.

If publishing for the web, export the test image, email or publish it, and look at it on another device. If using a hosting service, you don't want to find out the hard way they are reprocessing your images in a way that trashes the quality.

The test images do not need to be perfect, but the color balance, brightness and contrast on your screen and paper or the web should be predictable.

Pre-Processing
While the images are still in "incoming" make all bulk changes such as Lens correction and adding GPS IPTC, keywords and other metadata. No image processing for color/contrast/exposure and no sharpening.

To handle a lot of images, create a small number of temporary collections called 'temp-description' and stuff double handfuls of images into these. You can also add some more metadata in bulk as you are tagging files into the collection.

This lets you break evaluating hundreds of images into manageable pieces. If you shot in a night club, you might use temp-TheBand, temp-People and temp-Other.

Change over to Filmstrip view and rate individual images.

To make this easier, pick one of the temporary collections if you created one. Filter to only "unrated" images. As you rate images, they will disappear off the screen. This requires you use the direct keys (control 1..5 on PC) and not the 'add/subtract a star' method.

Rating (brutally):
"reject" for total losses (Pictures of the inside of your lens cap)
1,2: for photos with multiple major defects and further image processing may not save it.
3: An ok photo. It has at least one defect but is better than not having an image.
4: Great image (but could still be improved.)
5: Beyond perfect -- the image has to be "Wow!"

4's are very rare, and 5's usually don't come until after further image processing. There may be no 5's at this point. There may be no 5's in hundreds or thousands of images.

Select from the good ones via Labeling

'Select' here means 'Selected for further image processing'

Stay in Filmstrip view and filter to show only the images rated 5, 4 or 3, and assign labels for "select" and "second" for the same image series/subject. Head to head, one image is better than the other in some way. Not all images will be labeled, i.e. selected, and some 3's may be selects because that's all there is to work with. If you select two images, Lr and Br can show them side by side to help compare them.

While labeling, the image rating may get readjusted.

Any test or setup imagees like a color checker or white or gray card is a 'select'.

"Yup, that's still crap" review.

When done with the higher rated images, go back and select only the 1's and 2's this time for a last review to see if any images, that might be far from perfect but still have some value.

If you delete, this is the point where all the rejects and 1's would be dumped, and maybe even the 2's.

The above is for an initial sort/select.

Once done, delete or rename temporary collections. If keeping the images on your hard disk move the folder using Bridge from 'incoming' to final folder in 'Pictures'/'My Pictures' folder. If Lr, you might moves these to your master database, or a separate one if you work that way. If offlining the images, copy to offline storage, 2 copies is better, then delete.

Sets like photographs of foursomes at charity golf event get offlined after printing -- the images have no value after this and just use disk space.
At some point, I'll change to Lightroom for part or all the above.

Part II

Take the selects, and possibly some "seconds" into Photoshop/ACR/LR or other software for more work. Save-as .PSD (mostly) and leave the original raw file. If the edits improve the photo a lot, rerate upwards. Refine keywords and other metadata each individual image at a time.