Workflow:

1) Take picture
2) Open lightroom
3) Connect camera
4) Select images you want (or leave it to only download new images)
5) Download images
6) Choose images to edit
7) Edit images
8 ) Export as jpegs
9) Back up onto 50 quid external USB and take to work

I really can’t see what the hassle is.

I’ve played with jpeg & RAWs to convince myself that I should really be shooting RAW rather than JPEG.

But, I’ve never managed to manipulate a RAW file so it looks better than the JPEG; setting the camera to RAW & JPEG capture, then tweaking both to achieve a certain end result.
I can achieve a ‘different’ result, but not something I could point out as being decisively better.

I suspect i am doing something wrong, judging by the amount of people that swear by shooting RAW.

If I have thousands of JPGs it’s small enough to be synced to some sort of online storage service, which is nice and easy. Not so with RAWs.

Don’t then. Just backup jpegs online. That’s what I do.

It’s not like you’d be worse of than if you just shot jpegs in the first place.

RAWs are primarily for generating the jpegs. Once you’ve done that there’s marginal benefit to keeping them anyway.

Yeah that requires me to shoot JPG+RAW. Which is a faff because I end up with duplicates of everything.

Then if I only back up the JPGs, I have lost the RAWs forever. What I want is RAWs for the good images and JPGs for the snaps.

As I learn more about photography and udnerstand images better, I can imagine that there will be times when I want to revisit old pictures that I really like and process them in different ways.

Yeah that requires me to shoot JPG+RAW. Which is a faff because I end up with duplicates of everything.

Err, no.

You shoot in raw.

You generate jpeg.

You backup both jpeg and raw locally but backup just jpeg online.

You don’t have duplicates as jpeg and raw are different file types and have different uses.

Then if I only back up the JPGs, I have lost the RAWs forever. What I want is RAWs for the good images and JPGs for the snaps.

I look at online backup as a last resort if my house burns down. That’s the only way I’d lose the nas and the pc. So losing the raws won’t be a major concern.

Hmm.. ok stuff to think about then cheers.

The duplicate thing is just annoying when browsing. I would love it if I could get elements organiser to treat jpg and raw as different versions of the same image.

Yeah, I agree mixing them in the same folder does make it cumbersome.

That’s easy enough to fix though. I have DXO setup to generate jpegs to a different path to where it found the raws. You could do the same with elements presumably.

I’ll experiment. I do have to sit and go through all my images when I import them, because there’s a lot, maybe 50% that I don’t want to keep at all. The easiest way is to apply the star ratings to them. So if I can find a way to process based on those I might be able to do what I want – otherwise I’ll just stick with RAW.

The thumbnail generation in the organiser is still annoying though.

Oh boy, Lightroom 4 is ace!

Only shooting in RAW now as you don’t even know as its so easy with Lightroom,

Cheers chaps.

£68 off Cameraworld.

Great stuff!