What do you do with your Photoshop files?

[SebC]

I've always been of the opinion that the cost of storage is virtually negligible, but wow are PSDs huge. Just edited one of my travel pics, and it's 200 MB. Were I to edit all of them, 1500 pics x 200 MB would be 300 GB. So what do you guys do with them? Do you do your work in Photoshop, save the result and delete the working file? I feel like I might want to go back to them, but maybe that's just because I'm new at PS? Bite the bullet and buy more HDDs?

[Dion]

I save all my pictures in Picasa3.

http://picasa.google.com/

I also found it has great editing tools.

[FurnaceFace]

I flatten the files and don't save them in PSD format except for a few which I'll reuse. For example I make up a calendar every year so I have psd files for templates. I also do a collage of the top pics from each trip I take so I keep those. I'd say your option is to flatten them and never look back, burn DVDs, or buy some disc.

[GoinAllTheWay]

With the price of hard drives these days, just store em locally. You can buy a 1 TB drive for like $100 these days. Spend a few hundred bucks and you have 3000 GB at your disposal.

[chid]

I have them on an external hard drive

[BlackArcher101]

I've been storing them on a seperate hard drive in the pc. However, with most of my PSD files being over 250mb, some approaching 1 GB, my space will dwindle fast.

Right now my workflow is Shoot RAW > 16-bit TIFF > HDR or Pano Stitching > PSD to edit > Convert to JPG > Remove Noise. Then I remove the TIFF's (some of them are 2.5GB) since the PSD's are smaller. A 1TB external drive with Raid mirroring is in the works for sure. I always keep the RAW's, and I keep the PSD's because sometimes the time to get to that stage could be 6 hours of processing time. Besides, I'm a novice at editing, so as my photoshop skills get better, then I might want to go back and improve existing photos.

[DownInFlames]

You might want to try Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture. They do non-destructive editing and only add a small file with the changes. You'll definitely want to shoot in RAW to take advantage of them though.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

You might want to try Adobe Lightroom or Apple's Aperture. They do non-destructive editing and only add a small file with the changes. You'll definitely want to shoot in RAW to take advantage of them though.

I've recently made the switch from photoshop to lightroom for just doing basic editing of my photos. If I need to remove something such as an unsightly garbage can or a telephone wire I'll jump into photoshop, but for the most part corrections can be done in lightroom with a less ballooned file size.

Another recent switch I've made is to ignore any photo that I wouldn't rate a 4/5 or a 5/5. I would come back from a vacation with 800 photos and I'd whittle that down to 300. Problem is (as you are finding out) my storage issues became a real problem real fast and I was spending incredible amounts of time editing all those photos. So much editing in fact one of two things would happen: 1. the workload would be overwhelming and I'd just stop working on them or; 2. I'd half ass my edit jobs and the pics wouldn't look as well as they could. When it was all said and done I'd still sit people down to look at my photos and the process would take way too long. After about 5 minutes people would get a little bored of everything (think of those wedding slide shows that last 20 minutes).

I would also recommend an external drive devoted to photos. Future shop has some 1TB drives on for $129 ... that will hold a ton of photos.

In summary: Explore Lightroom, edit only your best photos and get a giant hard drive.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

PSD to edit > Convert to JPG > Remove Noise.

Curious about this bit... noise removal after Photoshop (how?) or just in Photoshop after converting to JPG (what?)?

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by SebC

Curious about this bit... noise removal after Photoshop (how?) or just in Photoshop after converting to JPG (what?)?

I could do it before, but it's easier after converted to JPG. I use the software called 'Neatimage' to do it.
I also use "Droplets" for editing to be done with photoshop that is common for a lot of photos (ie resizing, converting, sharpening, watermarks). Just drag the photo files onto the droplet icon and sit back and enjoy.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

I could do it before, but it's easier after converted to JPG. I use the software called 'Neatimage' to do it.
I also use "Droplets" for editing to be done with photoshop that is common for a lot of photos (ie resizing, converting, sharpening, watermarks). Just drag the photo files onto the droplet icon and sit back and enjoy.

Cool, might have to look into those.