Digital Workflow and Asset Management
“Amateurs talk about cameras; professionals talk about backups.” This technical course saves careers. It teaches the unglamorous but vital skill of managing thousands of digital assets. Students will design bulletproof backup systems (the 3-2-1 rule), master metadata and keywording for searchability, and learn to color-calibrate monitors to ensure that what they see is what they print.
§ 01 By the end you can
- Implement the "3-2-1 Backup Strategy" (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite)
- Master Adobe Lightroom Classic: Catalogs, Collections, and Smart Previews
- Apply metadata standards: Copyright, Keywords, and IPTC data
- Execute Color Management: Monitor calibration and ICC profiles
- Design a long-term Archiving solution for terabytes of data
§ 02 Sixteen sessions
The whole semester.
- 01The Life Cycle of a Digital Image
- 02Storage Hardware: SSD vs. HDD vs. RAID
- 03File Formats: RAW, TIFF, JPEG, DNG
- 04The 3-2-1 Backup Rule
- 05Importing & Renaming Methodologies
- 06Folder Structures: Chronological vs. Project
- 07Adobe Lightroom: Catalog Management
- 08 · MidtermMidterm Examination
- 09Culling Strategies: Ratings & Flags
- 10Metadata: The importance of Keywording
- 11Color Management: Calibrating the Monitor
- 12Export Settings: Web vs. Print
- 13Client Delivery Systems (Pixieset/WeTransfer)
- 14Cloud Storage Solutions & NAS
- 15Disaster Recovery: When Drives Fail
- 16Final Project: The Fully Archived Portfolio System
Midterm around session 8. Final project briefed at session 8 or 9 and developed in stages until the juries.
§ 03 Final project
Final Project: The Fully Archived Portfolio System
Recommended reading
- The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers by Peter Krogh
- Adobe Lightroom Classic Classroom in a Book
- Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser
- Organizing Your Photos with Lightroom 5 (Concepts apply to Classic) by Peter Krogh
- Zen and the Art of System Administration (Philosophy of maintenance)
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