Workflow

We Yankees spell, Cratique, "Critique"
Hey, too much Possum, ooooooops, cajun chicken.   

But then we'd miss out on the fun   It's still on my list, just haven't had a chance to get around to adding the spell checker.

...

Cards are dumped to hard drive using DIM.  The files get renamed using date, time, and a serial during the dump and the card number is put as the first part of the file name.

Files are copied to 2 sets of either CD or DVD depending on how many images.  One copy goes in the client folder, one goes on a spindle.

Files are moved to a network drive where they become part of my backup routine.  Nightly my computer backs up my photo drive to a USB drive and also to a remote server.

Load the folder into Bridge (don't have Lightroom yet, but it is on my to buy list).  Every file gets tagged with 2 stars.   

I go through and look at each image in the preview window and either tag it using the stars (1 = bad, 3+ = show client, 4+ = my guesses on what the client will like best, 5+ = into my portfolio) or delete it.  Any technical flaws will be deleted if I don't think it's fixable. 

All files that weren't deleted get renamed to YYYYMMDD-serial.ext, so the first shot from an assignment today would be 20080501-0001.CRW. 

Filter so I'm only looking at 3+ stars.  Those I will go through and make sure color and exposure are right using the RAW converter. 

Run the 3+ images through Photoshop actions to scale them down to web sized and copy to an empty directory. 

Upload the converted JPGs to my proofing site and email the client a link.

Pretty much.  But the only time that I'd go back to the DVD would be if the files get messed up before I get them on network or if I delete one accidentally.  Bridge has an option of saving the original filename in the XMP data so the original name is there if I need it, or at least I can get pretty close by looking at the files around it.

The only exceptions are when the images are purely personal - dogs playing in the yard, that sort of thing.  I normally leave them with the filenames that DIM assigns.  I like the shorter versions for clients though because it's a lot easier for them to say "image 0102" than then really long, ugly filenames that they come off the card as.  The CRW_#### filename isn't ever used in my workflow.