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Workflow Thoughts? Your input greatly appreciated.

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Doug1234

Doug
Joined
Aug 4, 2015
Messages
35
Location
Ontario
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
4.x
Background:

Keywording and organizing approx. 7000 photos represents the 2nd half of a project I started years ago where I began and completed scanning my family slide collection. My goal is to provide the photos to my family members (of varying technical ability) on a USB key and online where they can perform searches and enjoy the photos as much as I do.

The overall process below represents the approach I have come up with for accomplishing this. My greatest concern is around ensuring I do the keywording 100% correctly. (Given the volume of the collection and my appetite (and time) for going over the collection again if a mistake is made). This may help other folks in a similar situation as well. I really welcome and would appreciate any feedback you have on the keywording approach and the overall process.

The Overall Process:
  1. Import 7000 high resolution (avg. 75MG each) slide images into Lightroom.
  2. Begin keywording.
    1. As keywording process occurs, organically add keywords and build hierarchies as necessary . I tried to define the entire keyword list (including hiearchy in the beginning, but I don't believe it's entirely possible to complete the hiearchy all at once as it is very hard to imagine all keywords. Instead, I think (please comment with your thoughts) a more generic approach of asking who?, select keywords, what, select keywords, when, select keywords might work best.
  3. Perform any additional actions on the photograph.
    1. Add caption metadata.
    2. Rotate photos as necessary.
    3. For example: adding audio annotations.
  4. When the keywording is complete, sort on different keywords and rearrange the photos in the correct chronilogical order. (recall, out of order slides)
    1. Rearrange the images in the correct chronological order.
  5. When finally complete, in months (or years) from now perform an export to JPG.
    1. Ensure image size is reasonable for slideshows and sharing.
  6. Copy .JPG files to USB key and provide to family member.

  7. Import photos into Picasa.
  • Perform frequent backups. I use the following command line .BAT file (windows) and it works beautifully for backing up only the changed files and not everything. It can, of course, be sheduled.
Source path, destination path, mirror source to distination, log the changes to synchanges.log

  • robocopy "j:\ds" k:\ds /MIR /log:c:\SYNCCHANGES.log
 
On keyboarding you mention "add keywords and build hierarchies as necessary" - I think you imply that as you add the keywords you'll do the hierarchy at the same time. I think this is slow, and that you are better adding the keywords by typing them in, and then organising them into a hierarchy later on. I tend to "clean up" my keywords into my hierarchy on a regular basis - I have the general hierarchy planned (everything into one of Places, Events, People or Things), and then build / update the hierarchy later. This is probably quicker.

A useful tip is if you know keyword ABC is going to go under XYZ in the hierarchy then you open the keyword list and type "ABC XYZ" in the search bar, and both of them are found. Then drag ABC under XYZ. This is very quick to do, and is the main reason I'd split those two tasks

Hi There - yes, that is what I was implying. I've been racking my brain trying to come up with every possible keyword before beginning my keywording, but I think it's more about a general approach. I see what you are saying - just enter the keywords as necessary and then build out the hierarchy towards the end, even every 1000 slides or so I'm thinking. I haven't tested, but I imagine adding a keyword to a hierarchy would apply the changes to all effected photos?

In your comment above you mention "Places, Events, People or Things" as your top level hierarchy items. Is this burrowed from Google Photos were they seem to take a similar approach? I've really struggled with coming up with an approach for this and could use some help. I'd hate to realize 3000 slides in that my approach wasn't optimal.
 
Hey jmj2001, sounds like you've got a nice process down, but I just wanted to point out that I used a slide feeder in my scanning project. This, accepted upwards of 100 slides and it worked quite well as long as the slides were the same type. (size, material (plastic/cardboard) and thickness). What was most time consuming was the blowing off of each side of each slide. It still took quite some time, especially at 4000dpi / slide, but it was a labour of love. Hearing the scanner "screaming" away was great. I'd return and find them all digitized in individual files and ready to go.

Hello Doug1234, Yes, I'd missed the point about the feeder in your post above and was thinking of my own experience with a flatbed scanner. It would certainly make a difference to be able to go away and leave a stack of slides being scanned automatically. The feeder seems to be a fairly expensive accessory to the scanner but I suppose it could be worth it.
 
All good, I was curious what the sf-210 was worth these days, so I just looked on Amazon & B&H, but in both cases it says that the product is no longer available. Edit: (When I purchased it I think it was around $300-$400. This was around 5 years ago.) All the best.
 
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