The workflow for a sports or press photographic is going to be completely different from a documentary photographer or an art photographer.

Richard, I don’t see why. The process of downloading, renaming, adding basic metadata such as copyright and keywords, and then going through them and evaluating, ranking and sorting and finally converting to dng and backing up is a workflow process that should be common to all photographers the way I see it. After that stage I imagine a different focus might be applied by different photographers, depending on their output needs, but don’t you think the initial work flow is going to be (or at least should be) roughly the same for everyone?

First of all I think people should concentrate on their workflow and processes. Previously the software was rather thin on the ground and limited so you couldn’t match it to your workflow. For this reason I think a lot of people’s workflows were driven by the software – they got a program or 3, and their processes becaome what they could do with those programs. Now I think the software is mature, and you no longer have to compromise, or work with umpteen separate programs. The worklow for a sports or press photographic is going to be completely different from a documentary photographer or an art photographer. So look at how you work, or should work, from capture through initial sorting, cataloguing and archiving. Then choose the software that you need to accomplish these goals. Without contradicting myself, let me say that I think Lightroom has changed things quite dramatically, but you need a photobrowser to supplement it. DNG is also core in my opinion. I’m half way through this process, and may do a little series of blogs on what I have found useful if I have time.