Ok, so last Summer was a busy but manageable Wedding Season- I actually enjoyed doing a lot of things photo by photo... But I'm way too busy this year. And some of the charm is wearing off

I had been shooting in JPEG (for familarity sake) but I just shot some PeeWee Baseball pics last night in Raw, and really liked the easier batch handling. But I'm a total self taught novice in the software realm. I tried following a tutorial for a droplet, but it wouldn't work. Is there a site or info anyone can share on how to best handle MANY and Large files? Should I get Lightbridge (only heard about it). I would love all the details you want to share, from the program to look at your images to throw away the bad ones before you batch everything.

Here's what I have: a MacPro, Canon's software, Photoshop (and all the stuff that came with it in the pack, Adobe Bridge)

Thanks for your input!

You can do what you need with Bridge & Photoshop. Lightroom is very helpful but not mandatory, and can be cumbersome if you're not used to it or know how it thinks.

Here is a basic workflow for you with Bridge & Photoshop (minus the mandatory backup step):

1. Copy cards to hard drive.
2. Open folder in Bridge and let it build the thumbnails and previews (can take many minutes if you have a lot).
3. Look at the images in Bridge and if you like one press the number 5 to give it five stars (some people like color labels instead). You may hear people talk about giving decent images 1 star, better images 2 stars, etc. But the absolute fastest way is to find the ones you like and give them five. Don't rate the stuff you hate.
4. Filter the images by viewing the 5-star images only. Look at them again and see if there is any new "junk" in its new context. If you hate a 5-star image, give it a 0 and it will disappear from the filtered view.
5. Highlight images from similar lighting situations and open them in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). Adjust one and then hit Select All (upper left) and then Synchronize. It will ask you what attributes you want to apply to all the highlighted images. You decide.
6. If you need to do more extensive surgery, open problem images individually in Photoshop.

That shoud get you started. There's lots more you can do though!

Thanks, I'll tinker around with those wonderful steps. Does anyone have any outsourcing options that they suggest? I have heard of a few, but would love some input from experience?

Thanks again, My husband and puppy thank you already

I just had to mention that I do the 5 or zero stars rating too and my husband thinks I'm weird for not doing 1-2- or 3 stars. Just wanted to say I'm happy I'm not alone in my thinking.

: )

Well... I am also the Head Bunny at EditBunny.

Thanks.