I’ve gone through many photographic workflows. Each time, I’m certain that I’ve figured out what works best for me. Finally! Then a few months later I switch back or come up with something new. I wish I would stop doing this, but I probably never will.
So, I have a new workflow ????
There is a part of me that really wants to let Adobe deal with everything. Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to organize, store, back up, or otherwise manage tens of thousands of image files? I could just use Lightroom (desktop) and let the cloud take over the rest. Except I can’t. I have proven myself incapable of giving up control over the files. I have decades of images stored in nicely-organized, dated folders. I know where they are. I know how to back them up. It feels safe forever.
Also, I can’t stop returning to Capture One Pro. Lightroom Classic has everything I could ever need, workflow and management-wise, but I prefer actually editing in C1. And I prefer the results I get with Capture One.
I like to “burn” a finished JPEG of every image that I’ve spent any time editing. That way, if (when?) whatever processing software I’m using disappears, I’ll still have the finished image. I’ve treated these JPEGs in a couple of ways. I’d either send them to what I called a “Digital Print Archive” which was just dated folders. Or, I’d make the copy right “next to” the original. Either way, I ended up with two files to manage for each photo.
Previously, to handle all of this, I used a complex combination of Capture One and Photo Mechanic to cull, tag, and otherwise deal with my library and set of burned JPEGs. It was pretty powerful, but it was a pain to maintain.
I wanted to simplify things a bit, so I’m now using only Capture One and Apple Photos. I import, cull and edit photos in a Capture One “session”, then export the keepers directly to Apple Photos. Photos is where I make albums and such. It also gives me “faces” and syncs everywhere. Plus, all the photos I take with my phone are right there with everything else.
I’ve done something similar to this before, of course, but I’m trying it again.