[Leica] DMR M8 workflows

[firkin at ncable.net.au (Alastair Firkin)]

Dear all,
Now that my digital work will be more than happy snaps from the  
Diglux 1, I have been considering "workflow". How should I work,  
please help.

My initial plan was to have enough storage and to that end, I have  
bought 4 x 300 gig hard drives to store and sort the images.

I have been using iView and iPhoto, BUT iView does not allow you to  
look at full images from RAW files anymore (part of the Microsoft  
take over and the bundling with Phase One software), so I have been  
playing with Adobe: I bought CS2 some time ago and "filing" in bridge  
and using "camera RAW SEEMS a good combination, BUT the RAW work  
seems better at the moment in LightRoom beta: any comments.

So at the moment I thought:
1. take images in RAW
2. transfer to a "holding" folder titled "new images"
3. Review images in ? iView/lightroom/aperture/bridge
4. Rate images as a)junk to trash, b)record image never likely to  
make a print bigger than 6 x 4 and c)"potential" images
5. Throw out the a images, convert the b images to jpeg files and  
keep the c images as RAW (but what kind of RAW I have yet to fully  
understand)
6. Label the images with key words (does anyone have a standard  
"list") and comments:
-- here I have a problem. iView had a great comments area BUT it does  
not seem to "map" to the comments area of the other programmes.  
Putting comments in the Bridge area seems more flexible, but they do  
not turn up in iView --- I am thinking my days using iView are now  
numbered, and this saddens me as I just paid for an upgrade, and its  
been a good workhorse for so long and I have so many comments already  
filed in it including all the FOM2 stuff
7. transfer the folders to the hard disc stores : this perhaps should  
be done before labels but I think bridge or lightroom can "follow"  
where they have gone and are "stored"
8. remove the images from the new image folder to free up the  
computers basic hard disc again
9. Begin working on the c images, and make displays for web and printing
10. go out and do it again.

As you can see, I want to start with a basic plan and keep to it for  
at least 12 months to try to get some order and filing in my system,  
rather than the current mess.

Thanks for any comments and help

Cheers and here's luck

Alastair