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Managing Pic Files-downloading Etc.

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D. Silvio Righello

New member
Greetings:

I recently purchased a Nikon digital camera and I'm not certain which is the best way/program to download the picture files, name folders, pictures, and manage them. I received a USB CF card reader and in the instructions it mentions a CD with some simple instructions on how to install it. However, the CD is missing so I do not know if it was meant to accomplish all these processes. I have Nikon Capture NX and View NX, they came with the camera but I have no instructions so I have refrained from doing much more than installing them and briefly looking them over. I at first sight did not find any means to download or manage files. I have a copy of Lightroom coming but I do not know how well it performs these tasks if at all. Is there somewhere on the Internet where I can do some reading and learn what I should or can do with regard to these processes?
 
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Marshall Everett

New member
Hi Sil,

I too, shoot with a Nikon, and use my laptops card reader to transfer files. My process is simple. Insert card into reader, browse through windows explorer to Card location, copy all image files from Card to hard drive. I use an external storage drive to house all my images. Since I shoot mostly RAW files, I copy all images into "RAW Dump" folder on the external drive. This process keeps all information about the image. Once I am confident that all images are transferred I will place the CF Card back into the camera, go to Menu and Format the card. That last part of the process is usually days later, that way if something does happen, I still have the original images on the card.
The last piece of the process concerns job images. If I have done a job, wedding, portrait, etc., for a customer, I will burn all the RAW files to a DVD for extra storage.

Once I start working on images, going through the RAW conversion process, I use a TIFF extension for the saved file. This way, I can open, alter and close the image without being too worried about file degradation as in jpeg format.

I create various folders that are topic related and store the completed file there. My naming strategy is usually "image number-specific topic of image" - example- 8453-horse.tiff. That way, if I want to search for all the horse pictures, I can search by "horse" to find it. I am sure that if you had thousands of horse images that a "date taken" in the naming process would help.

Hope that helps a bit,

Marshall
 
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D. Silvio Righello

New member
Marshall:

Well, you have presented me with a good deal of information and I appreciate it very much. It appears that you are suggesting the download, file and folder management be done exclusively with Windows Explorer. I will try that out as I have some test shots on the CF card presently. Then when Lightroom arrives, I will begin yet another steep learning curve- fortunately, I have signed up on Lynda.com to take the online video training for Lightroom. Thank you again..
 
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