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One of the very popular questions that come across to me is basically what is my setup when it comes to manage my photographs and post-process them.

So I’ll take a minute or two to explain what do I do and how do I process my images. What kind of hardware and computer and storage and everything is involved in my image management and processing. So I basically am a Mac user. I use an Apple computer which is basically a MacBook Pro. I’ve been a Mac user for over a decade now and I really understand this operating system very well but this doesn’t make a big difference if you are a Windows user.

It’s actually fine as long as your computer is capable of processing high-quality photographs has a good graphics card has good enough RAM, for example, my MacBook Pro has a 16 G.B. RAM and because of which it helps me process heavy raw files and also allows me to work on video files when I require at times.

So I use a MacBook Pro as my basic machine even when I travel I take this along to every place on earth that I go to because it helps me download pictures using software like Lightroom. I can actually download them to a temporary hard disk while on the field but when I come back to my base, for example, and when I come back to this desk and am working on my images the first thing I do is transfer all the files from a small portable external hard disk to something like a thunderbolt hard disk.

This is a six terabyte hard disk and it’s been on for a few years and I’ve not filled it. I also shoot very judiciously I just don’t fill a lot of images just for the sake of it. So I transfer files to a hard disk like this which basically is the place from where I access images when I’m processing them. After a few days of coming back.

But when it comes to processing images for printing I am a really big fan of using a very well-calibrated monitor. For example, I am an evangelist for this monitor which is called BenQ SW320 a 32-inch wide monitor. What’s most special about this monitor is my Mac Book Pro can give me colors that are very close to the sRGB color gamut but when I want to print an image I usually want to see how the print is turning out to be. So that’s where this monitor comes into the picture.

It’s actually a monitor that simulates an Adobe RGB color profile which means, I can be processing pictures using my laptop but I’ll be actually looking at my monitor which shows colors that my laptop cannot show. In other words, if this is showing a red in a particular way and I print this image it’s absolutely going to be the way it looks on this monitor. Maybe it’s very different from how it looks on this monitor which is why I recommend Adobe RGB compatible monitor especially if you’re into printing.

Any which way is if you want to process your pictures and render them as correct color profiles the monitor becomes a very integral part. I also recommend using something called network-attached storage. It is called a NAS but what it simply does is it’s actually connected to the modem of your computer or your network and every photograph that you send to your hard disk in your NAS is actually accessible from any part of this globe. If you actually log into your house computer a may be the NAS you can be picking up profiles from all over the world and use them.

For example, it happened to me in 2016 I was in Costa Rica and one of the very prestigious contests asked me to send her off file and I couldn’t wait till I come back to India 15 days later. I simply asked my office to switch on the NAS and I connected to it sitting in Costa Rica. I could download the raw file and send it to them for the final round of the contest. It also won an honorable mention so sometimes it’s very important to have access to all your files even though they are in a lot of gigabytes of space.

So I use network-attached storage apart from a physical hard disk like this to manage my files so a good a computer desktop or a laptop like the MacBook Pro or maybe a powerful Windows machine a great monitor to handle colors and a very good device to store your files is what I recommend as a basic setup for you to work on your photography. If you’re curious to know what’s an Adobe RGB color profile and how is it useful when it comes to managing your images.

You should actually subscribe to our course on Lightroom Classic CC which allows you in-depth knowledge of what is a monitor calibration what are profiles and how do you manage all this while you develop your photographs and get the right colors out of it for printing as well as for the web. Ah, by the way, the link for the scores is right below in this description.

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