It was summer and I was hired to shoot the Little League Juniors baseball state championships.  I knew I was going to need a workflow that could help me process hundreds of images a night and provide the necessary integration with my website.  Being a software developer and a video editor, I know there really is no one magic software that does it all.  And like most of the heavy hitter photogs I read and follow, I too have a workflow that incorporates various programs that do certain things better than the others.  And like any software, they all have their quirks and bugs and patches.  And I certainly do not play the brand whore game….If I think a piece of software fits my needs better than one I’m currently using and if the switch is worth the investment in money and time,  it’s goodbye to the old and in with the new. 

After playing around with trial versions of several DAM (digital asset management) programs, I settled on Microsoft Expression Media.  And I thought I’d like to share with you all how I use it in my workflow as I think I use certain features that are maybe out of the ordinary.  Anyway, let’s begin.

First off, I create a directory on my drive systems and dump all the images into that directory.  I then use Nikon’s ViewNX to cull and tag all images.  Any images not tagged get moved into a subdirectory called “broll”…from my days as a video editor…meaning “B-Roll” footage…these are the images that I don’t necessarily want to delete, but don’t really cut the mustard.

I then use Nikon’s Capture NX and Photoshop  for any Post adjustments I feel are needed.    I then create a subdirectory called “jpg” and then use Capture NX to convert the raw files into a jpg format into the jpg subfolder.  Now is when Expression Media comes into play.

After opening Expression Media, I import the entire folder and subfolders into the new catalog workspace.  I have setup a template for which Media Info fields show up in the thumbnail view.  If I have a particular tag I want on those images, all I have to do is add a tag into the proper “Catalog Field” on the right of the screen, let’s say an Event Name.  And then select all the images in the List or Thumbnail view and drag the selected range onto the new tag.  Let’s add an Event.  Go to the Event section under Catalog Fields, click on the sideways triangle and click on the Add Event that pops up:

The Add Event dialog box will show up.  Add your tag to teh Term field.  COOLNESS ALERT: If you want to add more than one term at a time, use commas to separte terms.

Now you will see the new tag under the Event Catalog Field bucket.  You can then select all (Ctrl-A) or multi select the images in the List or Thumbnail view and drag the selection onto the new tag.  In this example I choose 6 images.  Notice that after dragging the six selected images onto the tag, they now have their “Event” tags populated while the others don’t, and notice that the “AndreaSeniorPictures” tag on the left now has the value “6″ next to it.  This not only shows you how many pictures in the catalog have this tag, but you can select the little white circle next to the button and it will then “filter” all the images in the catalog (regardless of where stored on the harddrive) and show you just those pics.  This is a feature I use for sports shoots and the “Catalog Sets” tags.  When parents order pictures of their kids, I will create a new Catalog Set tag with the name of the person ordering and then drag the pictures they want to order into that catalog set.  Then I will choose that particular catalog set to filter out all the images and then perform certain “Actions” (see menu) on just those pictures as part of my “ordering” workflow (topic for a later post).  Here’s the result after dragging the selection onto the Event tag.  Notice how only the selected pictures now have the new tag.

Here’s the view after selecting the white dot next to the nubmer 6 on the Catalog Field Event tag:  Notice how it filters the images to just show images with the tag.  You can create all sorts of Catalog Field types.  If your camera doesn’t put a copyright tag on your images, you can create a  Copyright Catalog Field and quickly drag all your images onto that tage and will add the copyright to the all the images appropriate EXIF field.  Don’t think that this is something unique to Expression….I think all good DAMs have this functionality…I’m just showing you how Expression does it.

I can also perform editing on the images.  By double clicking on an image, it will bring it up in the Media view and then I can click on the Image Editor Button to bring up an floating Image Editor toolbar from which I can do all sorts of stuff.  Again, some of the stuff in here is hoaky…for some editingI use other programs.  what I use most here is the crop tool for my ordering workflow.  If you want to open the image in another editor, it a quick “right-click” and then choosing “Open With” in the popup menu.

DANGER WILL ROBINSON ALERT:  If I perform a lot of cropping on images, the program will at some point crash.  So make sure you save as you go.  And the first time you see a crop not take, save and exit and reopen.  If you come by my studio someday and see a tapesty of angst and curse words hanging over the studio, you will know that I didn’t follow my advice!

So now I’m ready to get things ready for uploading to my website.  I use Microsoft SQL server and have created certain management pages that allow me to “upload” the images and database entries using the management pages.  To do so, I have to do two things in Expression. 

First is to select the images I want uploaded and “convert” the images to a 72dpi web version. 

Second is to create an XML data file that will be used by the database upload routine I have built in my administration pages.  The XML export routine exports certain values of each image to an XML file that I use to populates my online Album database, such as image file name, shooting data, catalog set tags.  For the purpose of this exercise I’ll show you the actions I take in Expression media, but I won’t show the upload routines in my website, as I consider those proprietary.

So, first we want to export the images to a converted 72 dpi web based version for use in customer online Album viewing.  You will notice on the left of the screen, under the Catalog Folders section, I have showing my jpg subfolder and have selected the dot next to it (now green after selecting it…it would have been white before selecting it).

I then select all the images in the thumbnail viewere (you could just as easily switch to the “List” view and do the same), and choose the “Action” menu item and then the “Convert Image Files…” sub menu item.  You will notice on the Action Menu several items related to actions you can take on all sorts of digital file types.  That’s because, like any DAM, Expression handles almost any type of digital asset, be it images, video, sound.

That will bring up the Convert Image Files dialog box.  I’m going to click on the “Options” button in the lower left to show you something I think is really cool:

Notice how I have saved several “conversion” options.  When you modify the Convert Image Files dialog box settings, you can save those preferences.  As you can see I have several.  For the cool part, notice the ones I have saved with the word “watermark” in the title.  Using the “Watermark” setting in the dialog box, I can have a watermark I have created, applied to all the images during the convert process.  The watermark functinoality allows you to select alignment of the watermark and selection of the watermark.  I have various watermarks I use, so I can create several watermark configurations and use them as needed during the conversion process.

Here’s a screen shot of the watermark setting screen.  DANGER WILL ROBINSON ALERT: The preview functionality here sucks bad….the watermark image as compared to the conversion size ratio of the picture is not shown in the preview!  I have found that I had to play around with the creation of my watermark resolution to get it to work right with the destination resolution of the final image overlay.  But the fact that I can save several conversion setups for quick use later make up partly for this.  I use Microsoft Expression Design 2 to create my watermark assets. 

Case in point below.  Notice the watermark preview on the left.  Then squint realllllly hard and look at the bottom  of the picture preview, you will see the watermark all nice and itty bitty.  But when you export, the watermark is “bigger”…

Here’s the example of the image above using my 72dpi Social Watermark option (see how the watermark shows just fine):

Now it’s time to create the xml file:

DANGER WILL ROBINSON ALERT:  Here it does not matter what you select (either by Ctrl-A or multiselect) in the thumbnail or list view.  Whatever you have showing is what will get exported in the XML file…so make sure you have showing what you want exported by use of the Catalog Fields or Catalog Folders (you know, the little white circles next to the Catalog Fields or Catalog Folders).

Go to the Make menu and select the XML Data File…submenu.

After consuming the XML data file into my website, here’s the final Album view on our website:

I hope you enjoyed this sharing of my Expression Media 2 workflow.  Please consider leaving a comment, as this is the first kind I’ve done.  Pleae feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Later…Mike