I use Xubuntu as my OS, and here’s what I do: load card into card reader. Navigate to DCIM directory on card. In file browser sort by date, newest first. Open first image in Nomacs (reads RAW directly), and start reviewing shots. If I like, I drag the file over to my hard drive. I do this manually as I review each shot. My directory structure is Photography > {year} > {month} > {specific _project}. Then, I load the current directory into Darktable, and make edits and exports. I archive the SD card when full, and back up my Photography directory on Dropbox and on two external drives.
Maybe it’s not the most fluid workflow, but it works well for me, and keeps it all organized without getting “locked in” to a specific software.
Here’s mine, not much different from the rest but with some changes:
Import and renaming with RapidPhotoDownloader - it organizes photos in the format I want and renames for my filename pattern (a problem whn you have more than one camera)
Culling and metadata with XnView - I prefer to do and initial round of culling before importing photos into the RAW developer, and lately I’ve started to apply metadata in bulk at the beginning, rather than at the end
Import into darktable and work from there (ratings, etc)
Under Linux, make one thing, but make it well…
I copy & paste from card (no need to find this /!!~#* cable!)
I use kphotoalbum for viewing all image formats, deleting, tagging, retrieving, opening wih other software.
I use Darktable’s Lighttable. You can make the “thumbnails” very large - up to one shown at a time if you like - and ‘z’ gives a fuller screen preview.
For the initial stage of culling the out-of-focus/junk images from the rest, geeqie and nomacs seem to be best options – at least under Linux.
I tried using brew to install geeqie on my mac, but it does not display the photo’s correctly (remnants of the previous image overlap the current image).
I was able to build nomacs on my Mac, but it immediately crashes when I try to run it. I will see if I can figure out why.
I do like Darktable’s layout. I have read that the “next” version will support the mac better, so have not tried it on my macbook, but maybe I should.
I get the impression that RawTherapee runs on the mac well. Everyone seems to rave about its ‘quality’, but it seems less intuitive to me. Trying it under Linux, I have not even been able to figure out what keys to hit to set the star-rating for a photo. Hitting number keys seems to set a filter, rather than setting the rating for the current pic.
I just tried XnViewMP on the mac. Once I figure out how to get it in an appropriate mode, it worked pretty well, until I got it into some mode where it wont display any pictures. I assume that I somehow set a filter, and it is not obvious how to unset it.
The keybinding say that ctrl-5 sets a 5-star rating but that does not work. cmd-5 set that rating, but I would prefer ctrl-5.
One of the reasons I like XnView is the metadata management, I hve set up a complex tree of categories that’s very useful for bulk metadata operations.
[quote=“jpoet, post:16, topic:2297”]
…until I got it into some mode where it wont display any pictures. I assume that I somehow set a filter, and it is not obvious how to unset it…[/quote]
XnViewMP in linux keeps the settings in a folder ~/.config/xnviewmp/
Do not know the equivalent in a mac. Delete it and XnViewMP will revert to default values and make a new one. Sometimes need to do this for an update as well.
I have ended up using darktable even for the initial culling step. Partially because I have been ending up there to do final editing anyway. Partially because darktable expects XMP files to be named differently than any other program I have tried. This means that if I use another program to go through an rate the images, darktable does not pick up those ratings because it wants the xmp file to be named basename.ext.xmp, instead of basename.xmp. It would be really nice if darktable was compatible, there, with other programs.
I really want to like Rawtherapee, but it is just less intuitive to use.
FastRawViewer is on sale right now: http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ and it is nice enough to justify the reduced price. Unfortunately, they don’t have a Linux version. Also, since it uses the (seems be standard) naming of basename.xmp, darktable does not pick up the ratings made with it.
Thanks again, to everyone for their suggestions and tips.
I’d personally like other programs to use basename.ext.xmp, since often times I will produce a tif file that I’d like to put some notes in the xmp aboutprinting that partulicilar file; in this case, basename.xmp fails miserably, as I do not want my tif and raw file to share a sidecar file.
Geeqie has indicated that basename.xmp is how adobe does it, but I don’t find that to be a valid justification.
The basename.xmp is a really bad idea. I often shot jpeg and raw and then this simply doesn’t work with basename.xmp, for this use-case I need basename.ext.xmp.
Darktable does pickup most of the metadata on the basename.xmp on the initial import, but not afterwards. I have to handle this between XnView and darktable and solved it by creating my own bash scripts based on exiftool to sync metadata to and from darktable xmp files. I have this streamlined in my workflow, so it isn’t a big hassle, but would still love that XnView to handle xmp file names a bit better.
