Digital photography has in some ways brought us enormous freedoms and the opportunity to do things that anyone who ever worked in the days of film and chemical darkrooms would probably only have been able to imagineer after a number of beers in the pub.
It is funny to think that there will probably be many people reading this who have never loaded a roll of film into a camera, have never actually concerned themselves with what sort of film to buy, what ASA or ISO actually means and so on. Who have never had to drop film off for developing and had that agonising wait for a week until it gets back and you can eagerly pore over the prints to see if you in fact shot what you thought you shot!
So many things will slip by the wayside now: an old trick of mine, for example, when shooting a lot of film was to tear the first half inch or so of the film leader off, instantly identifying which rolls had been used and which had not to avoid mixups. I guess such tricks will fade into history now.
Having arrived home, you have the matter of what to do with all the images that you have shot. Obviously, the first job is to load them onto a computer. So which computer should you use? Mac is the tool of choice for the imaging pro and the graphics pro. They make life so much more logical and easy for you. Once you have got under the hood of a Mac, a Windows machine just seems so rough.
So you have the computer sorted out. Need some software to deal with the images now. Apple have the excellent Aperture and that is my preference. It will only work on a Mac of course. Adobe have Lightroom which is available for either Windows or Mac and is broadly similar. Both allow you to build and catalogue vast libraries of your images and will allow you to carry out 90% of the basic exposure and enhancement tasks that you will want to do.
Both programs also open and display RAW files for most cameras. This removes a separate step which used to be common when using this type of file. Your end use will determine whether you shoot RAW or JPEG: I recommend RAW personally. Mac's operating system OSX will open RAW files by itself, unlike most versions of Windows.
Then you need some form of protected storage to ensure that your valuable work and irreplaceable memories do not vanish when your computer hard drive dies. For this, one of the most useful options I have found is Drobo. This plug and play system takes normal HDD's of pretty much any size and completely automates the process of protecting your data. The basic unit takes up to 4 HDD drives of any capacity and there are options that take many more for those who need that level of storage.
Many photographers are members of the Photoshop Appreciation Society. I am not. I am a professional photographer who does not even own a copy of Photoshop. There. I said it. My reasoning is simple: I find it very counter-intuitive to use, with possibly the worst User Interface of any software written in the last 10 years. Compare PS to any software written by, say, Apple and you will immediately see what I mean. PS is also far too complex for 90% of photographic requirements.
So, I use Nik Software plugins for Aperture. This is a suite of outstanding software add ons that work far more intuitively to anyone who is a photographer first and a digital imaging technician second. They give results as good as - or better than - PS in less time and with less frustration. Occasionally, of course, my clients needs dictate that something be moved, added or whatever and PS is needed. In these cases I outsource that to a PS specialist because I would rather spend my time making images and working on my business.
So for me, workflow is shoot, download into new project in Apple Aperture, back up images to 3 internal drives and the Drobo external drive, sort and rate images in Aperture, process the selects in Aperture and Nik plug-ins and export to client/printer/web.
Keep things simple, use the software and hardware that fits in with the way you want to work - rather than change your ways to fit the software/hardware designer's ideas! Also, never be afraid to be different: creativity is individual and so are the choices you make to produce it.
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