What’s your photo editing workspace like?

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Abinoone

Abinoone

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I’ve been on a kick to improve my photo editing workspace, and I’m curious to know how you’ve equipped your own. What is your physical work area like, what computer and monitor(s), backup devices, and other peripherals do you use, do you have a photo printer, etc? What software products and suites do you use for photo editing, and do you have a defined workflow you follow in doing your work?

I like uncluttered, minimalist work spaces, so mine currently consists of a simple wooden slab desk, one 27” high-res monitor, Windows laptop, and a USB hub supporting a 5TB external drive and XQD card reader. My laptop lives in a vertical stand, and I drive using a wireless keyboard and mouse. Bluetooth speakers are paired so that I can watch Steve’s videos 😎 No photo printer, although I do have a small office printer for documents. My editing platform is equally minimalist, consisting of Adobe Photoshop and Bridge, along with Topaz AI sharpen, DeNoise, and Studio 2 plugins. File organization is simplistic as well - a series of nesting folders organized by year and location. It all makes sense to me but I’m quite sure there are much better ways to organize!

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Ha. That is uncluttered by my standards. This includes my workspace which is organized by how far down in the pile a thing is and my files where I simply save everything to my Synology NAS and everything that I edit to a file that describes the trip.

I am Bridge-Photoshop-TopazAI in that order and rarely do anything else. I am messing with the new Lens Blur feature in ACR. I do have ON1Raw and think it has value if I can ever learn it but so far.....

32" monitor, Desktop Intel I9, 1TB SSD+2TB USB, Synology Nas 4 x 6TB 1:1 mirror, no printer.

Tom
 
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Abinoone said:
I’ve been on a kick to improve my photo editing workspace, and I’m curious to know how you’ve equipped your own. What is your physical work area like, what computer and monitor(s), backup devices, and other peripherals do you use, do you have a photo printer, etc? What software products and suites do you use for photo editing, and do you have a defined workflow you follow in doing your work?

I like uncluttered, minimalist work spaces, so mine currently consists of a simple wooden slab desk, one 27” high-res monitor, Windows laptop, and a USB hub supporting a 5TB external drive and XQD card reader. My laptop lives in a vertical stand, and I drive using a wireless keyboard and mouse. Bluetooth speakers are paired so that I can watch Steve’s videos 😎 No photo printer, although I do have a small office printer for documents. My editing platform is equally minimalist, consisting of Adobe Photoshop and Bridge, along with Topaz AI sharpen, DeNoise, and Studio 2 plugins. File organization is simplistic as well - a series of nesting folders organized by year and location. It all makes sense to me but I’m quite sure there are much better ways to organize!

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I dream of a work environment like that, but my ADHD won't allow it no matter how hard I try, I am very much like Tom mentions above, how far down in the pile of stuff. I do confess that every few months the clutter finally overwhelms me and I go through a purging only to find it's back quicker than you can say Photoshop. I do like your vertical laptop stand and might go for something like that for better cooling. I have a Razer Blade 15 and just got a Samsung 4TB USB-C drive for image storage that gets me just over 1050 MB/s through USB-C (used to have a USB HDD but that is now relegated to additional backup duties) and upgraded RAM to 64Gb and C: to Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe over the weekend cause processing was really laggy of late but thinking of going back to a desktop for better graphics engine and faster processing overall (easier upgrades too), I use a QNAP housing setup with RAID and a couple of 3TB drives for a total of 6TB, but want to go to RAID mirroring (for additional backup redundancy) especially with how cheap HDD's are these days.

My workflow consists of Breezebrowser Pro to cull images, Lightroom to process the keepers and Photoshop only when additional tweaking is needed, but of late I'm finding more and more tools inside of LR that get me 95-100% of the way the majority of time relegating the need for PS less and less it seems.
 
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The last Intel generation of 27 inch iMacs, 3 external drives, one of which is dedicated to Apple Time Machine backup. XQD/ SD card reader, Canon 9500 MK II printer. Coffee or bourbon, depending on time of day. Location is partially finished basement. I primarily use Luminar Neo, but also use Affinity Photo and Nikon NX2.
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I’m with Tom on the pile excavation thing…. Don’t DARE post a picture of my workstation… huge photo printer and serious tower workstation on the table top, everyday printer stacked on top….RAID drive and assorted ssd drives attached… Leaning towers of STUFF… and a huge pile of photo paper under the table… (plus an empty photo paper packet jury rigged as a screen shade… ) 😅🤣. I promise myself (every year) that one day I’ll sort it out and have a pristine space, but every time I tidy, I can’t find the STUFF…. Sigh.
 
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Wow, I'm impressed by how uncluttered some of these photos are, that would never work for me. I have a huge space with a large desk, then a table that holds two printers, then a large file cabinet. In back of me is a long cabinet with storage under it and off to the side is another counter, shorter, with storage space. I use the long counter to put prints into frames and the shorter counter holds a bunch of camera equipment that I usually leave out. Two of the walls are filled with prints that won awards and I'm hoping to start on the third side if I'm lucky. I do pick up and clean up and put things away, but there's just a lot of stuff, it seems to grow overnight!. There is also a long floor safe and when I travel I leave any equipment I don't take in that. I also have a storage room that holds prints, frames, etc. I obviously need to get things more together.
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I’m a simple man, I use a 16in MacBook Pro laptop and I usually edit photos sitting on the couch.

I use Lightroom 99 percent of the time and I’ll edit the occasional photo in Photoshop. I store my photos on an external SSD with an exact copy backed up to an external HDD.

Additionally, I use Backblaze as a cloud backup, I had to use it earlier this year to restore my photos after a drive failure. It was a pretty easy process.

After the drive failure I added the external HDD, at the time I just had one external drive and Backblaze as the only backup plan.
 
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jeffnles1 said:
My area is such a mess I'm embarrassed to show a photo.
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Same for me. Desk salvaged from a give-away pile, shelves made from scraps of lumber, a few random obsolete hard drives, a tangle of cords, piles of stuff I ought to tend to. OTOH the space for the backup external hard drives is sacrosanct. Mostly.
 
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My workspace is clean 😊. I use Mac Studio, Samsung 8TB SSD as my main image library connected with the Mac Studio. Screen is Asus 32 inch. Back up; OWC 4 bay 12 GB drive, 2 8TB LaCie drives and some spare ones.
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Rene said:
My workspace is clean 😊. I use Mac Studio, Samsung 8TB SSD as my main image library connected with the Mac Studio. Screen is Asus 32 inch. Back up; OWC 4 bay 12 GB drive, 2 8TB LaCie drives and some spare ones.
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A man after my own heart! Love your setup! I notice that you have a calculator - very smart for adding up all the money you’re spending on camera gear! 🥴

I also see you have a monitor light bar - do you like and use it much? What brand? Have considered getting one myself but was t sure how useful it would be.

Thanks for posting!
 
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Abinoone said:
I’ve been on a kick to improve my photo editing workspace, and I’m curious to know how you’ve equipped your own. What is your physical work area like, what computer and monitor(s), backup devices, and other peripherals do you use, do you have a photo printer, etc? What software products and suites do you use for photo editing, and do you have a defined workflow you follow in doing your work?
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My computer is W11 with Intel processor and a lot of memory and disk space. Four screens, two for editing - Benq SW-321C and Wacom Cintiq 16. The other two are for context and web/help
I am self-employed and working from home so I have separate table and computer for work and photos. They are positioned in right angle in the same room for easy swapping.
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Abinoone said:
A man after my own heart! Love your setup! I notice that you have a calculator - very smart for adding up all the money you’re spending on camera gear! 🥴

I also see you have a monitor light bar - do you like and use it much? What brand? Have considered getting one myself but was t sure how useful it would be.

Thanks for posting!
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Well I’m done spending on kit…so I tell my wife but don’t think she believes me. Yes I use the light bar all the time. I bought it off Amazon and the make is Quntis.
 
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Mac Studio with Studio display and an OWC Thunderbay mini in RAID 5. Catalog and current year originals are on the internal SSD and older years out on the RAID. Backups are a mix of a Samsung T7, a SanDisk 4TB SSD, and 4 or 5 4TB 2.5 inch Seagate spinning rust drives along with BackBlaze. A kit desk similar to an Ikea one. On the road it's my M1 14 inch MBP and some T7s for backup of images…separate catalog that gets exported/imported into the main one back at home.
 
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