Having a regular, systematic way of transferring, editing, and managing your photographs is vital to being a great photographer.  You want to quickly find any image, clearly see its edit history, and verify it is backed up.

A photography workflow is a ritual that you follow to copy, name, organize, edit, and backup your photographs.

Photographers may have slightly different workflows; however, there are required functions that robust digital photography workflows include:

1. A sensible file naming system.  The image’s filename should have “standalone meaning,” allowing you to know the image creation date and whether it is an original or edited version.
2. A consistent schema for organizing image files in directories on your computer hard drives→ Your directory structure should allow you to find a given file quickly.  The directory structure should allow for simple backup operations and compare with other directories for changes/differences.
3. You follow an established routine in taking the original image file to a finished photograph for online viewing, printing, or publication→ .  Your post-processing operations should become second nature, so you become efficient and perform high-quality edits.