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Converting RAW Files to Save You Space

Photoshop, Post-Production, Tools Mar 26 , Episode 263

Cleaning Up Your Computer and Hard-drives

Today’s episode is all about SPACE. Because I take so many images on each photoshoot I often end up with 50GB of photos that I never use. Even though you can get hard-drives for pretty cheap, after awhile all those files eat up a lot of space. Today I’ll show you the method I use to organized by sizing them down into Jpegs instead of deleting them- just in case I ever want to go back and access them.

Today’s Timeline

0:35- Tshirt design and other announcements
1:55- Contest winners
2:35- Why I need to free up space
3:15- Using Lightroom to get organized
5:00- Exporting RAW files
5:55- Comparing the difference in size
6:50- Flagging favorite photos, and deleting the ones you know you’ll never use
9:10- Explanation of how these are categorized
9:50- Putting the jpegs back into the same folder

Last Week’s Contest Winners

Lets us know which Phlearn PRO Photoshop Tutorial you would like!

Todd Langkamp
Alain
Roudha
Abar Aranburu

New Contest!

What is your method of saving images from camera to computer? Next week 4 winners will each receive a Phlearn Pro. 2 will win by having the most “likes”, and 2 will be based on the BEST ADVICE for organization. Post your method below for a chance to win!

Winners will be announced on Monday, April 2

Gear Used in This Episode

Wacom Intuos 4 Small

Adobe Photoshop CS6

15" Macbook PRO

Sony NEX 5N

Audio Technica AT2020USB Microphone

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Christian Noval

Fileorganization? Diffidently Lightroom. It’s even getting cheaper with the latest version
Personally I wouldn’t delete any of my raw file. I even have backup of them all. I don’t delete them for two reasons. First of all because it takes time. Second because harddrives are cheap nowadays.
My best tip is to buy a harddrive bay (in the desktop or even usb) and use cheap harddrives it to store old files. I even have a lot of older harddrives, that I don’t use in my computer anymore. They’re fine for external storage.
http://www.facebook.com/JosephTylerNewell Joey Newell

I’ve been trying to find the best program to import files from my camera to my external hard drive with no hassle in between. What i’ve decided to use is the EOS Utility program that comes with most if not all Canon cameras. Bottom line its the easiest method I’ve seen. I can choose to download straight to my external hard drive with many helpful options. I’ve noticed with some programs i have to download to my computers hard drive then to my external hard drive. I don’t have that kind of time! plus then i have to delete photos and sometimes even if I think the photo is deleted off my computer I still end up finding it and having to delete it. I try to not download photos to my lap top unless I’m going to edit them. EOS Utility is simple and saves me headaches.

THIS IS GREAT THANK YOU SO MUCH Aaron.

-Joseph Tyler-
Kantardgiev

sorry, but so much talking I got tired. This the first unhelpful tutorial from Phlearn. I don’t get the point of it. Just say, you save space by converting your RAWs to JPEGs and then delete. Hope you’ll do better next time.
http://twitter.com/StudioLeversund Studio Leversund

With all possible due respect,

Is your time really worth that little, that it’s worth spending an entire evening freeing up 60GB of space, all while destroying your originals?

Let’s do a little math here (with big round numbers)…

You can get a decent 3TB external drive these days for around $200 (or less). 3TB is about 50 times the 60GB you saved. This means that you just saved $200 / 50 = $4 on that cleanup job. Four dollars. Is that what an evening of your time is worth? Even if you double that (taking into account your offsite backup drive), it’s still less than $10.

How does it even make sense spending time on this, with such an abysmal return on investment?

Here’s another little bit of math:

Even if you spend every week day of a year (about 250 days) cranking out 50GB of images (about 12.5TB in total), that’ll still only set you back about $800 (or twice that, with your offsite backup). And what’s more, you now have access to all your originals, and you’ve avoided spending time cleaning up your drives.

And how about letting the client foot the bill for the storage?
Anders Philip

I got a little hamster orginaze all my files, and if i ask nicely it will also make me an toast:-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freeflyer09 Rubén Chase

Hi Aaron. I’m going to explain my method to save my images. I’m spanish, so sorry for the language in the image below and the mistakes I probably comitted in the redaction.

Well, I only shoot RAW when I think of edit or compose my photos, so my RAW files are less of 2 or 3 GB of weight.

My JPEG files are photos of my family and friends, or just proofs when I adjust my camera, so it doesn’t weight much, and I don’t often delete it.

For the storage of my photos, I create a new folder of every sesion, into my “photos” folder. I rename it on this structure: “Year – Month – Day (Little description)”

This helps me at the hour of organize all the stuff, becouse it automatically orders chronollogically.

I attached a print screen so you can understand me better.

Thanks for reading!!
http://twitter.com/jonyoder Jon Yoder

I was actually thinking about doing this! I shoot all my pictures in RAW and a lot of the time for personal pictures I have a small percentage that I keep. Thanks for making this.

I’m doing this a little differently: I try to rate all my pictures after I import them. So for these old RAW files that I don’t care for, I’m selecting the files with a rating of 0 to Export and then delete. The only improvement that I see to your method is that under the export module, there’s an option to add the photos back into the catalog as you export them. This saves you the time of synchronizing the folder again.

You just have to watch out that you keep your original selection of files (after exporting) since LR will also keep the labels on the exported JPGs.
Sebastian Ortiz

Great explanation, Aaron. Think I’m gonna try your approach… Thanks.
http://twitter.com/_Roudha_ Roudha

i never shot in raw but after watchen one of the videos i tried it thanks to u,
and about the method that i use to organize my photos and give my laptop space ..
i bought a hard drive with a good capacity around 120 giga ..
and i used nikon transfer software to arrange my photos inside this hard drive ..
Simon

I have two hard drives, one I use as a mirror of the main drive. But I also have an external 1TB drive, which is my main storage. Images I know I am very unlikely to use again, I back up to DVD’s. Some I know I never will use and they get deleted. That’s it really.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Alexey-Telyatnikov/100001015986926 Alexey Telyatnikov

Hi Aaron!

I always take photos with small previews. Before coping them from camera to PC, I usually create folders with (YYYY.MM.DD) and small description format, inside this I create 2 subfolders: Raw and Preview. Then I just copy JPGs to Preview folder and Raw… to Raw folder:)

I check previews and delete all bad images, then I compare two folders and delete RAW files. After post production, and if I am sure that I will not return to these photos, I delete both Preview and RAW folders, however if I am not sure, then I choose some the best shots and keep Raw files.

Thank you!
http://www.vinsonimages.com yamaha83

its not like this process is a mentally draining process. I,m currently doing this for my non client files while watching some Big Bang Theory. While storage is cheap, there is no need to waist space on saving a RAW file for an images that do not warrant such a file.
http://www.vinsonimages.com yamaha83

my process is as follows.

upload files to computer, create a separate catalog if they are client images (this makes lightroom run better since i dont need to load all the thumbnails from every shoot, i also have the specific catolog saved in the same folder as the images so when i move that folder the catolog always goes with it). Carbonite starts to auto back up my files to the cloud. I then backup to an external drive. after editing, i upload the edited jpeg images to Zenfolio for client proofing, which also acts as another form of backup since i can always download the full res file later.

as space is needed, older images get deleted off my main computer but i keep the backups on the external drive, zenfolio, and Carbonite. eventually i will only have a backup on external drive and zenfolio, then just the external. less backups as the file gets older. although i have unlimited space on Zenfolio, so i may always just have a backup on zen and external. have not gotten to the point where i needed to delete anything off zenfolio.
Lloyd258

Not so much an organisation technique for photos from photo shoots, but i was fed up with my desktop getting so cluttered from different files, folders and what not, so I created my own desktop image that would help me stay on top of things. I felt almost claustrophobic having sooo many folders inside solders inside folders. This way, i can use the Hot corners in OSX and navigate to 4 important sections of my life/ Work/ University, all on my desktop. I searched for interactive desktops programmes, but i couldn’t find anything even close to it, so i helped myself, and made this, as simple as it is, its worked absolute wonders for productivity. I have the .PSD if anyone wants a copy of it, and if you think it might help your work flow
Matthew Lloyd

Not so much an organisation technique for photos from photo shoots, but i was fed up with my desktop getting so cluttered from different files, folders and what not, so I created my own desktop image that would help me stay on top of things. I felt almost claustrophobic having sooo many folders inside solders inside folders. This way, i can use the Hot corners in OSX and navigate to 4 important sections of my life/ Work/ University, all on my desktop. I searched for interactive desktops programmes, but i couldn’t find anything even close to it, so i helped myself, and made this, as simple as it is, its worked absolute wonders for productivity. I have the .PSD if anyone wants a copy of it, and if you think it might help your work flow
Anonymous

Sorry the image didn’t attach :/
http://www.facebook.com/sztyui Gábor Lénárt

This is how the pros do it, I think it’s worth a watch;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-6EQo6it7Y
http://www.facebook.com/vishaldiwan11 Vishal Diwan

voice missing ….