Series: Digital Photography Workflow for the Beginner - How to proof (review) your photos

This is part 3 of 6 in my series on Digital Photography Workflow for the Beginner. In this lesson, I’m going to share my methodology for proofing, or reviewing, your photos.

In the previous lesson I shared my method for transferring photos from your media card or camera to your computer. Now, I’d like to share my approach on quickly reviewing the images.

With digital cameras, it’s quite easy to take more pictures than we were previously accustomed with conventional film cameras. While having the flexibility to take more shots has its benefits, the downside is a significantly increased number of photos on the computer that, if not addressed initially, will make locating a particular image more difficult down the road.

To combat this problem, I strongly recommend proofing, or reviewing, your photos shortly after you transfer them to your computer.

If you apply the learnings from my first lesson on photo storage, the process is simple. Note that you can use the file management tool of choice for this as long as it provides easy access to your photos. Windows Explorer, for example, works fine.

Once you have all of your images in the <Original> folder (again, see lesson 1), use the “Select All” command to select all of the photos. Now, copy the photos to the <Proofs> folder to make duplicates of them.

The next step is intended to be quick and painless, the trick is to not spend too much time reviewing each individual photo. Remember, you still have all of the photos in your <Original> folder in the event you delete something accidentally.

Within the <Proofs> folder, and with your file management tool in a preview-type mode (a mode where you can view the photo and not just thumbnails - see below example), review each photo, deleting the ones that don’t initially strike you as a “keeper”.

I am a strong believer in first instincts; if it doesn’t jump at me, it’s gone. Certainly, any photo that is out of focus, the composition is off, eyes are closed and, most importantly, one where I know the subject would not appreciate it (you know who you are), is gone!

At this point, you may feel liberated enough to delete all of the original images in the <Original> folder to free up disk space. If you’re skittish (nothing wrong with that), and don’t have any disk space concerns feel free to leave them. If hard drive space becomes an issue down the road you can always delete them at that time.

Please chime in with your tips on photo proofing.

chris@clawblog.com

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