We were visiting our son recently for our grandson Logan’s birthday.  Our son was showing us his Sony Playstation 3 where he had inserted a jump drive with his own childhood photos on it.  Years ago I had digitized many of my slide images and had come up with a file naming structure then.  The above image came up on the screen and the viewer showed the file name “1975A025S John, Jeff at Redfish Lake.jpg”.  At that instance I realized how important it was that I had used some type of good file naming structure back then because I would have never remembered when the photo was taken, that it was taken at Red Fish Lake and I might not even have been able to identify which child was in the picture.

In The Days of Film

Years ago it was relatively easy to manage the images I took. I usually would take 35 mm slides in those days and would just buy those bulk trays to store them sequentially. When I got them back from being developed, I would write on the slide cardboard holder the names of the people in the picture.  I created little dividers in my bulk trays to separate the slides by year.   When I used negative film, I would put the negatives in plastic sleeves and then include those in a binder.

Digitizing Film Images

Once I start to digitize some of these slides and negatives, I needed to come up with a naming convention for the file on the computer.  I decided to tie the digital image back to the original, which meant I needed to do some type of naming on the original slide or negative sleeve.  I started out by using two digits for the year, a letter from A to Z for which role it was and two digits of which frame, and a N or S if it was a slide or Negative. So if my image was 96A03N, to find the original I looked for the 3rd frame on the negative sleeve of the first role taken in 1996. It all worked okay back then but the images started to come more from digital cameras and less digitizing film. Still I stuck with this concept. I had to expand the year out to four digits and the sequence out to 3 digits, but I would name a file something like 2002A003D, which was a digital only image taken in 2002. The A was the first group and I would just add a sequence until I decided to go to another letter.

Following that I would add in text that contained who was in the photo and where it was taken.  So I would end up with something like “1995B009N Sara at Tokyo.jpg”.  When I first wanted to give the kids a CD with images they were in, I would search for all the images with their name in it because I had taken the time to insert the names right into the file name.

Computer Folder Structure

On my computer I would put 10 years of photos in one folder, with a separate sub folder for each year. So I had a folder 1990-99 with a sub folder 1999. That 1999 folder has only 185 images. I took a lot more pictures but have only digitized 185 of them.

Anyone who has a digital camera knows that the number of images taken is orders of magnitude more than with film. Last year I  took about 2,000 images. So I gave up grouping the years in 10 year increments and just have a folder for the year. Inside that I have a folder for each day that I have images. I have Adobe Lightroom setup to import images from my digital cameras and create those sub folders, based on the EXIF information in the file.  After import, inside Lightroom I rename the folder to include some descriptive name.

Others who use this approach name those sub folders with something descriptive such as “Visit to Beach”. But then that folder, might be towards the bottom while “Christmas” would be toward the top. I guess I am too structured for that so I use the month-day for the folder name and then add on that type of description, such as “06-23 Visit to the Beach”. Initially I also included the year in the folder name but thought that was redundant since that folder is inside a folder with the year on it.    Since you can always get the date from the files EXIF, I am not too worried about not putting the year for the folder name, as long as the parent folder has the year in it.

Individual File Naming

That brings me down to the individual file names.   When I was digitizing film, each file was a stand alone.  I could later change the name if I wanted and it would not matter.  Since I am now using Adobe Lightroom, which keeps a database of all the photos, any renaming I do must be done from within Lightoom or it will not know where the photo is located and I will have to manually match up each individual photo file or lose any edits I have done.

Initially I was just using the camera generated name. It seems like a lot of effort to rename every single image.  My thought was that on my computer I have the folder structure that tells me the date and subject, and using Ligthroom, I have entered keywords to identify all family members.  But then I thought about the recent experience with my son viewing his childhood photos on his TV.

In the digital world information about the photo can be located in one of three places:

• The File Name – that is carried with the photo no matter where it goes and is readable by any device that can view images
• The EXIF – embeded in each JPEG and RAW image is lots of information about which camera was used, shutter speed, etc.
• External – Any sidecar file or database such as Adobe Lightroom that can contain such things as keywords

The further you move down the above chain the more likely you are not  able to retain that information many years later.  Obviously putting all you want into the file name is the safest, but that takes a lot of work, maybe too much considering how many digital images we shoot. That was understandable when people would search for a file by something in a file name as I did in the 1990s. But today we search visually, using some time of photo management software.  Using Lightroom, I can select the folder 2008 and see all the photos taken in this year.  Or I can select the folder “07-10 Crater Lake” and see the images taken on our visit to Crater Lake.  I don’t need to change all the file names. Instead, inside Lightroom I will use tags to find the images.

Placing the files for each day into a separate folder gathers together the folders that are usually associated with an event. Inside Adobe Lightroom, I can just click that folder in the navigation and see all the images.  This is a bit like the Events in iPhoto, but not quite as powerful since some events span multiple days and some days have multiple events.

Concerns About This Approach

The more we depend on software library programs such as iPhoto, Lightroom, or Adobe Photoshop Elements, the less likely we are to put into the folder structure and file name any useful information.  I was currently  using the camera generated name but that has very little information.  It only tells me which camera I used and the sequence of the image.  What happens if I want to change what program I use to manage my images.  Will all those tags I carefully entered, which are in the software database, be converted over. Information inside the EXIF should always be there since this is a standard.  Adobe does offer the option in Lightroom to create a side card file, so when you open it in another Adobe program, such as Photoshop, it can read that information.  But that means a bunch of additional files that only Adobe programs can read.

So I am changing my approach.  I will continue to use the same folder naming convention I have in the past, but I will use Adobe Lightroom to rename all my  images with a bit more information, but will retain the sequence number that was created by the camera.  This is important since I have uploaded many photos to an online service and I need to be able to find the original in the future.

After importing the recent photos, using Lightroom I selected all the photos in the “FJK 01-07 Logan Birthday Folder” and then issued this renaming command.

This renames each file with my initials (so I know who took the photo), the year/month, a bit of information about the subject and where taken, and the original sequence number.  With this small amount of effort, I ended up with the files named like this.

Yes, it is a longer file name than “_DSC2427.NEF” that was imported originally, but it contains a lot more information.  It seems a good compromise since it takes very little time.  The reason why I want to include the original file name sequence is because I have often uploaded the photos to some photo sharing site before I went back and renamed them.  This allows me to connect what is in the website and the original image.

Conclusion

Currently I am happy with the folder structure I am using.  I can easily find a group of photos as shown in this example that is from one year ago, at Logan’s first birthday.

This seems to be the simplest approach right now, but I have changed before and might well change again.  I am still considering if I am doing enough in terms or renaming individual files but doing more would require renaming individual files.  I believe I should go back and enter at least the names of the people in the file name, but that is a lot of work.  It is just that I have some prints of my ancestors and I don’t know who they are because no one wrote the names on the back of the print.  But for now, I would rather spend the time taking pictures so this subject is not yet closed.

Categories: File Management
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I have been creating a family calendar for several years now, giving it to each of our kids at Christmas. Each year I pick some pictures from the past year and include them. I started out with a do it yourself approach where I would have actually printed the pages on my home printer, then take them down to the office supply store to have their wire bound.

Although I am a big user of Adobe Lightroom, and rarely use the iPhoto program that comes with the Mac, I gave it a shot last year in producing the family calendar. That turned out to be a great process and much easier than some of the online services I had tried. Right from within iPhoto, I am not only able to create the calendar but click a button to have it printed and mailed to me. In past years the calendar was only 8.5 x 11 in sheets, but this new one is much larger format and the quality is very professional.

I didn’t have to give it an second thought to use iPhoto once again to create the calendar but since two of my kids have digital SLR cameras and my daughter takes far more and much better photos of her family than I ever was able to do, I added a new approach. I created a photo gallery on Mobile Me for staging of all the photos. I had a title slide for each month, not to be included in the final product, but to help me sort the photos so I would have several candidates for each month. With our children living all around the country, I needed a method for them to easily give me their photos.

Then any in the family could use this gallery to upload their photos directly. Then using iPhoto 09, it was easy to drag the photos around inside the web gallery to get them sorted by month.

Between Anne and I, our four kids and our eight grand kids, we have birthdays on most all of the months of the year. I grouped the images so those who had a birthday in a particular month could see the pictures of themselves on that month.

Next step was to use iPhoto to create the calendar. I just selected the Mobile Me gallery and clicked the create calendar button. I did not even have to download the photos to my local hard drive. I selected the Picture Calendar format to use, which has a photo page on the top sheet and a calendar on the bottom. ON screen I could work which each month and all the images from the Mobile Me Gallery on the left side. I started out with the cover page and picked an image to include and changed the title.

Then for each month, I would first enter any birthdays on the calendar portion (I had it insert the US holidays when I first started). Then for the top picture portion, I would first select a layout, from 1 to 7 images. Then it was a simple matter of dragging the photo from the left bar into one of the image placeholders. If I wanted to try some other photo, I just dragged it over and it replaced my first attempt. Once inside the placeholder you can zoom and pan the image if you wish.

When Anne and I were happy with the final results, I clicked the Buy Calendar button at the bottom. The cost was about $20 per calendar, plus shipping. I will get them in time to hand out to the kids at Christmas time.

Categories: Projects
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Post Processing of RAW Images

This discussion is specifically about the post processing of RAW images (See my prior posting on Shooting Raw Images).   One of the issues of shooting images in RAW, is that often post processing is needed since processing can not occur inside the camera.  When a camera outputs a JPEG image the camera itself will do some processing, depending on how the manufacture setup things and the setting selected by the user.

The parameters for this processing is guarded by too many camera manufactures who seemed more interested in selling their software than supporting the users. Adobe has provide some excellent software applications for post processing RAW images, including Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop and more recently Adobe Lightroom.  One of the weaknesses of these products is their inability to read the in camera setting and apply those during post processing.  People would therefore often feel that RAW images looked too flat and were not vivid enough.

If you have your Nikon DSLR set on “Vivid” for example and shoot in both RAW + JPEG, when you open both images in Photoshop, the JEPG image, which had the in camera processing, will appear much more vivid than the RAW image.  If you open the same two images in the Nikon program Capture NX, then it would read the in camera setting and apply it to the RAW image so the output would look much closer to the JPEG.

Adobe Camera Specific Profiles

Adobe, has released camera specific profiles that approximate these in camera settings.  I have tried them with my Nikon D300 and they look very good.  To do a comparision, I opened the same RAW image in both Adobe Lightroom 2 and Nikon Capture NX and placed them side by side on the same monitor, then did a screen capture.  The intent here is just to look at the color adjustments. No other adjustments were made.

This first example this shows with Lightroom using the Adobe Lightroom Camera Specific “Vivid” profile on the left and Capture NX using the “Neutral” setting on the right. I start out to show you how this profile can change the image significantly.  You will see what you expect, the one on the left has more vivid colors.  To view each image enlarged, click on it.

Now I changed the Capture NX (image on the right) to use the Vivid setting.  If the Adobe profiles are good, then the colors of both images would be close.

Next I set both the Lightroom Image (left) and the Capture NX Image (right) to use the setting “D2X Mode 3″.  This is a setting offered in the Nikon D300 to approximate what the Nikon D2X would produce.

And the last comparision is both set to “Neutral”.

Based on this informal testing, I feel that Adobe has done a good job at creating the camera profile for the Nikon D300.  Considering that using Lightroom is a pleasure to use and much more power compared with the poor interface and slow Nikon Capture NX, I am excited about these camera profiles.  Some may feel that Capture NX still does a better job but for me I would not say so and if it did, not enough of a difference to struggle using the Nikon program.

How to Use the Camera Profiles

View this video for more information and how to download and install this camera profiles.  Note that these profiles only are working with RAW images and they only work with Lightroom version 2 and ACR 4.5.  However note that there is no longer any need to download the camera profiles separately. They are shipping with the latest Camera Raw update (5.2 at the time of this writing) and will be shipping with the next update of Lightroom (i.e., 2.2).

In Lightroom, in the Develop module, under the Camera Settings, you will see this drop down (but only if you are viewing a RAW image).

These are the options that you can get for the Nikon  D300.  Each camera has it’s own options.  I found it best to create a preset for the ones I wish to use the most.

View the above video for more information.  Also see the FAQs on the Adobe website.

Categories: Learning, Post Processing
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I took theses original shots in 2006 using a Canon compact camera.  It had a type of pano feature that showed the prior shot on the LCD panel, allowing you to line up the next shot.  In 2008, I used a new feature in Adobe Lightroom 2 that lets you export selected images to Adobe Photshop as a Panoramic merge.  In Photoshop I cropped the image and made some minor adjustments.  I then exported from Lightroom, resizing for this blog.  Photoshop CS3 is much better than the previous version on creating panoramics.  I did not need to blend the seam in the sky as I did before.

See my PhotoBlog to view the image.

Categories: Post Processing
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I used the new localized features in Adobe Lightroom 2 to adjust areas in this photograph.  As taken, the site was too bright and parts of the rallen tree in the foreground were too dark.  I used both the gradient tool and the brush to adjust the exposure in some of the areas.

The easiest way to learn about these new tools is the free online Adobe Video Workshop.

The before and after comparision shows the impact of the changes.  Some might have been overdone, which is always a danger.  The top is the before.  This is sure a lot easier than the days when we tried to dodge and burn in a darkroom, but the concept is the same. Click on the image to view larger.

Categories: Post Processing
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Someone special in our family reached a new milestone, birthday wise. I decided to make a birthday card, instead of buying one. I wanted to get an image from each of the 60 years of Ann’s life but we don’t have any images of many of the early years. I know that is something our kids may not understand and certainly something our grandchildren would never comprehend. But I was able to get an image for a few of the early years and then every year since 1966. I put them all as thumbnails on a single 11×14 page, which I had printed. Click this image to see it enlarged.

Ann seemed to like the card and gift. She can take her new camera on our upcoming cruise.

Later we decided to go for a walk. Since we are no longer on day light savings time, we did not have much sunlight. What a good chance for Ann to try out her new camera. Here are a few of the pictures Ann took with her new Canon SD790IS camera.

Those are pretty good pictures in low light conditions for a point and shoot type camera, don’t you think? By the time we were about back home it was getting quite dark. I had brought my Nikon D300 big camera along and took the picture below of Ann with very low light conditions, hand held at 1/30 second without a flash, at ISO 2000. A flash would have made the background look black. Yea, my Nikon D300 Digital SLR still has a role!

Categories: Family
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I installed the Yet Another Photo Blog (YAPB) plugin for Word Press and have used it to upload this photo of Crater Lake.  If you click on the photo it should enlarge to fill the width of this blog.

I also setup a separate blog with a theme that is YAPB ready.  So far I only have a few images up there.  When you are importing a file with the EXIF data there, it will use the date taken to set the published date for the blog entry.

The theme supports a mosaic of the photos as shown below.   If you go to this Photoblog, you will see the latest image uploaded.  Click on it to cycle through other images.  Select Mosaic and you will get thumbnails of all the photos, from which you can select which image to view.  Click the image below to go to this PhotoBlog to test it out.

Categories: Publishing
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Our daughter, Sara, has started a new new photoblog called “Sara’s 100 Days of Photos“. Every day she posts a new photo with information on how it was taken and the camera settings.  I love the idea but am not sure I would have the discipline to post a new photo every day. Wonder if I could just collect 100 photos and then post one of them each day.  It is a great idea to get more involved with photography.

Here is just one example of her work that I really like.  With the blurred background and the composition of the photo, tipping the camera at an angle changes this from a good photo to a great photo.

Photo was taken with a Nikon D80, f/5.6, 1/60 sec., ISO-100, 175 mm

Categories: Projects
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What are RAW Images

A digital camera takes the information from the sensor and converts that information into a JPEG image using the in-camera settings for such things as white balance, brightness, contrast and sharpness. Those settings are either selected by the photographer or are automatically selected. Digital SLR cameras offer the option of saving the information that comes off the image sensor and save it directly to the memory card before conversion to a JPEG file. Such an file is referred to as a RAW Image file.  If you choose to save  your images as only JPEG, then the internal workings of the camera will take all that data from the sensor, process it, and save the file as JPEG.  But a JPEG only haves 256 levels of brightness for each of the three RGB color channels (red, green and blue).  On the other hand the RAW image has 4096 levels of brightness for each color channel, so if you save only as JPEG you camera will throw away some information.

Unlike RGB files such as JPEG and TIFF files, there is no standard for RAW images and each camera has it’s own format. Even within one manufacturer there are differences between camera models. The RAW image contains information from the camera’s sensor plus other information such as white balance setting, exposure, sharpening settings, and any other in camera color adjustment settings. Exif data is also stored in the RAW image.

Do RAW Images Lack Punch?

As digital cameras started to proliferate, we saw many of the camera manufactures build in their camera to digitally add more punch to the JPEG images.  Although this started back in the days of film, it was the movement to digital that allowed for much more in camera processing.  This is fine when the output in a JPEG where the camera can do the processing of the data off of the sensor.

With many cameras, when you shoot in RAW you can set the color adjustments in the camera.  These do not actually change the colors inside the raw image, but the camera setting is recorded there.  When you use the software that is sold by the camera manufacture, it will read what you set in camera and apply an equivalent of these settings to the RAW image.   Then when you create a JPEG from the RAW image it will look similar to what the camera would have produced a JPEG itself.

Digital Negatives

It may help to think of RAW image files as a digital negative. With a film negative you have all the information as recorded by the camera but they are not viewable directly but need to be processed before viewing or printing. So it is with RAW images, they need to be processed before you can view or print them. That process involves converting them to a RGB file such as JPEG or TIFF.

When a film photographer makes a print from their negative they would never think about throwing away their film negatives because those negatives contain information that is lost in making the print. Likewise the digital photographer would not want to discard their RAW images after converting them to a RGB file format such as JPEG.

Advantages of Shooting RAW Images

When taking the picture if only a RAW image is recorded, that file needs to be processed before using it. That is typically done on a computer using software that can read the RAW image and write a JPEG file. That would normally require an extra step for the photographer and for that reason many photographers just set their digital SLR cameras to record JPEG only. However capturing the RAW image has many advantages compared with saving only a JPEG image.

• Higher image quality. Just as a film negative has more information that is contained in a print, a RAW image has more information that can be contained in a JPEG file.
• More effective post processing. Using a computer program to convert a RAW image to a RGB file allows much better control over changing parameters such as white balance, contrast, brightness, sharpening.
• Non-destructive edits. When you use a computer program to edit a RAW image you do not lose any of the original information. Any edits are stored either as data within the RAW image file (usually only if you are using software provided from the camera manufactuer) or in a sidecar file (as is done with Adobe products). Even if you crop the image, you can always go back to the RAW image and start over. If you crop a JPEG file, then the cropped area is lost forever.
• You can use a lossless compression, or no compression, for the RAW image file. JPEG files use a lossy compression, which means some information is lost each time the file is edited and re-compressed

Disadvantages of Shooting RAW Images

• Increased image size. RAW image file are usually 2-4 times larger than the JPEG file, or even more if their do not use any compression. Than means fewer images can be stored on a memory card and more hard disk space is used to store the images.
• No standard. There is no standard for RAW image formats. I have both a Nikon D70 and a Nikon D300 digial SLR and both cameras use a different RAW image. So any software that is used to convert the image needs to be able to process a particular RAW image. Adobe has proposed a standard RAW format they call DNG for Digital Negative. So far the big manufacturers have not adopted it.
• Post processing required. There is an increased time to process the image to a JPEG format that can be uploaded to a website or printed. However that is not as significant as it once was. With the great adoption of RAW image formats, you can now effectively use them directly. On a Mac computer you can view the images directly using the file browser (finder) and Windows offers add ins that can do the same. I can upload RAW images to my photo sharing site, Smugmug. The upload process does all the work to convert the RAW Image to a JPEG format for me. I use Adobe Lightroom and can export directly from there to SmugMug, having all the post processing applied to the RAW image before it is uploaded in a JPEG format.

Shooting RAW + JPEG

Many cameras offer the option to shoot both RAW and JPEG files at the same time so for each shot you get two images. This might sound like the best of all worlds. There are some disadvantages however. Two images will take even more space on the memory card. For my Nikon D300 camera the RAW image takes up about 13 mb using lossless compression and a JPEG Fine image takes up about 7 mb, so if I shoot RAW+JPEG Fine, each shot takes up about 20 Mb on the memory card and on the computer when transfered there. With the greatly lower prices on memory cards that is not as big of an issue as it once was.

There is also the added confusion of file management when you have two different files of the same image. If you rename the JPEG file and not the RAW file it is difficult to keep track of things. Some programs such as Adobe Lightroom do a very good job or recognizing that there is both a RAW image and a JPEG image with the same name, except different extensions, and shields you from the complexity of having two images.

Conclusion

So in conclusion I feel it is important to shoot all your pictures using the RAW Image format if your camera offers that option. Whether you take the extra step of shooting in plus JPEG, is a personal decision. If I had plenty of free disk space and was using a program such as Adobe Lightroom, I would probably shoot in RAW+Fine JPEG. There was a time I would shoot RAW + JPEG basic so I could upload the JPEGS to a website but that is not needed now since I can upload directly from the RAW images. If I was either lacking disk space or was using a photo library program that showed duplicate images with the potential confusion of handling both RAW and JPEG, I would shoot in RAW only and create JPEG files if I need to, such as doing online printing. What I would not recommend is shooting JPEG only. I don’t see sufficient advantages to compensate for the disadvantages.

Categories: Camera Settings, Learning, Post Processing
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Our daughter wrote recently in her blog entry called PHOTOholic “So now I take pictures whenever I can of my family. I am known in my family as the picture nazi.” It reminded me so much of myself. When we had a young family I would constantly be taking pictures. Since it was the days of film I didn’t take nearly as many as I would today with a digital camera, but still enough that people would complain. Ann’s mother would often say “I hate it when you take my picture”. And yet those pictures over the years are one of the main links with the past and each year they increase in worth.

As many, I moved into taking video. But video is a very different animal. It takes a lot more time to edit and it is more difficult to share, more difficult to sort through and throw out way you don’t want. The video tapes sit on the shelf and are almost rarely used, while the still images are viewed frequently. I came to the conclusion that video was a diversion and for the most part stopped using that format so I could focus on still images. The videos I do create are mostly done with still images anyway.

So Sara, keep on taking those photographs. You can never recover what you did not capture. Your children will grow so fast that you only have one fleeting moment to capture each of them at this stage of their life.

Here are some additional images from our daughter’s blog which clearly demonstrate she has far greater talent than we do in capturing those precious moments:

SISTERS

SIBLINGS

Categories: Photography Principles, Portrait Photography
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