I use wild cards to automatically apply the date shot to both folder names and file names. I use Photo Mechanic to ingest and rename files. In comparison, Lightroom needs to be set up to use the embedded JPEG files, and it can take time to reprocess the RAW file to create previews and 100% views. Nikon and Canon RAW files include small basic JPEG files as well as a 100% view without needing any processing. It starts by using the embedded JPEG files in the RAW image. Photo Mechanic was developed with AP photographers in mind, so it is built around fast processing for people who need to quickly work through hundreds or thousands of images on a same day basis.
I've been using it for more than 10 years as the front end with several different editing programs. If Lightroom had Canon profiles for my camera and the Canon digital lens optimizer I would go the Lightroom to Photoshop route, using 'open as smart object in photoshop' this gives easy access back to the original raw within Photoshop.Ĭlick to expand.Almost without question, Photo Mechanic from Camera Bits is the best product for the front end workflow - download, renaming, applying metadata, reviewing, rating, identifying selects, keywords, captions, and a lot more. These days Lightroom is mainly an organizer rather than editor. After photoshop I save the final tiff back into this years lightroom folder and also in a 'keepers' folder. I work on every possible keeper in dpp4 a little but mainly Photoshop set to open the tiff from dpp4 in camera raw, which is basically the same as Lightroom. Any possibles the raw gets saved to my Lightroom folder for this year and later I sync the folder. These days though I use the Canon software which brings everything into dpp4 for initial review.
but I also like Lightroom with the painter tool.
It is a full featured photo browser with similar tools to lightroom.
But you should also check out Bridge that comes free with your lightroom/photoshop.