Jack Nichols Photography on building a post-processing workflow

Jack Nichols in a glaciar

Jack Nichols is a landscape and night-sky photographer who writes detailed how-tos on his personal site. In this article he breaks down the entire journey after you click the shutter—moving files off the card, choosing keepers, editing, and archiving—into a repeatable “soup-to-nuts” workflow. The emphasis is on consistency and finding photos quickly years later, rather than inventing clever tricks every time you shoot.

If you shoot large batches (multi-day hikes, client jobs, astro outings) and already use Lightroom or similar DAM software, this system is squarely aimed at you. Hobbyists with only a handful of phone pics might find it overkill; working photographers will probably nod along.

Tools mentioned

• Lightroom – handles transfer, folder creation, collections, and every later stage of the workflow
• Adobe Bridge – optional alternative for RAW conversion if you skip a full DAM
• Card reader / USB cable – two options for getting files off the camera; a dedicated reader is faster
• OneDrive – home for finished JPEG/TIFF exports and long-term storage folders
• SmugMug – Nichols’ stock-site publisher, synced from a dedicated Lightroom catalog

Steps to follow

1. Capture & Transfer – shoot as usual, then pull the card and copy to one master Photos directory. Each shoot lives in a folder named YYYY-MM-DD Title of Shoot.

2. Import – bring the folder into Lightroom (or Bridge), letting Lightroom create the date folder automatically.

3. Organise in Collections – under two top-level sets (AA To Process and ZZ Published), make a collection set for the shoot plus an All collection containing every frame.

4. Select/Cull – iterate through the All collection:

   • First pass: flag technically acceptable shots (P).
   • Second, third, fourth passes: raise the bar, copying picks into Best, Best 2, etc. (or use star ratings).

5. Develop – edit chosen images; finished files go into a ZZ To Pub collection (or To Stock / To Fam variants).

6. Metadata – add a structured Title / Caption / Keywords set, aiming for 10-20 keywords; Lightroom’s bulk keyword tool speeds this up.

7. Export – create four presets (web-watermarked, promo-JPEG, high-quality JPEG, archival TIFF) into sub-folders under Finished Photos/YYYY-MM-DD Shoot Name.

8. Archive – move RAWs to external storage via Lightroom so links stay valid, and ingest stock-worthy images into a separate “master stock” catalog that syncs to SmugMug.

Advice (extras called out)

• Use the YYYY-MM-DD Title folder convention—never mix shoots in one folder.
• Keep everything for a shoot inside that single folder; Lightroom collections do the virtual grouping.
• Progressive culling (multiple passes) is easier than one brutal pass; disk space is cheap, so Nichols doesn’t delete rejects.
• Keyword every finished batch immediately to avoid a backlog.
• Export multiple sizes once, then reuse them—saves reopening Lightroom later.
• External SSD/HDD + separate catalogs keep active work snappy and archives safe.

Read the full post for screenshots and detailed Lightroom dialogs: https://www.jacknicholsphoto.com/building-a-postprocessing-workflow (no explicit publication date; content accessed July 2025). More tutorials are under the site’s Learn section.