Digital Workflow

[Tighearnach]

Hi

Im really struggling to learn an efficient system and workflow for processing and storing images etc. Is there a book out there that is great for showing how editing and storage and printing etc should be approached and carried out.

Thanks for any advice
T

 

[tirediron]

Workflow is a fairly personal thing, and a lot depends on how you shoot, and what sort of work you do. Mine goes something like this:

-Download raw images to computer

-Go quickly through and delete any which are immediately apparent as junk

-Using [insert your RAW handler here] Nikon Capture, go through the images one at a time, deleting the dogs as I go. When I come to a potential keeper:

-Check WB
-Check exposure
-Check colour
-Straighten
-Crop
-Save as .tif

-With that repeated for all the images, crank up Photoshop and go through all the .tif files, do fine tuning with layers as req'd, cl
oning, spot-treatments, etc
-Once finished all that, save as .jpg

-Storage goes like this: All images are stored in a directory named appropriate to the subject, with subdirectories for each file format within that directory. It's both burned to DVD and copied to my external HDD for backup.

Note that while this workflow works for me, it's probably not appropriate for someone with high volume. I rarely have more than at the most a couple of hundred images to deal with at one time.

Hope that helps.

 

[BTilson]

I'm gonna jump in on this with a question. Why do you save to .tif? Is .tif a lossless compression file type? I know .jpgs are lossy after several saves and tend to develop artifacting and such.

Thanks!

 

[Tighearnach]

Hey Tiredon, thanks for that. Thats really helped me. I would be doing something similar myself although im a total noob so at the moment when im in tiff my processing goes as far as automatic WB and unsharp mask and maybe some increase decrease in saturation.

So when u save to jpeg u obviously save them as large as possible. If you wanted to email these would you then save them again as a lower quality jpeg and would u also need to resize them or can u just semd them as is?

Regards
T

 

[usayit]

Why do you save to .tif? Is .tif a lossless compression file type? I know .jpgs are lossy after several saves and tend to develop artifacting and such.

Exactly.

 

[tirediron]

I'm gonna jump in on this with a question. Why do you save to .tif? Is .tif a lossless compression file type? I know .jpgs are lossy after several saves and tend to develop artifacting and such.

Thanks!

That and because there's more to work with.

 

[ksmattfish]

-Download raw images to computer

-Go quickly through and delete any which are immediately apparent as junk

-Using [insert your RAW handler here] Nikon Capture, go through the images one at a time, deleting the dogs as I go. When I come to a potential keeper:

-Check WB
-Check exposure
-Check colour
-Straighten
-Crop
-Save as .tif

-With that repeated for all the images, crank up Photoshop and go through all the .tif files, do fine tuning with layers as req'd, cl
oning, spot-treatments, etc
-Once finished all that, save as .jpg

Note that while this workflow works for me, it's probably not appropriate for someone with high volume.

I'm processing thousands of photos a week (at least during wedding season), and my workflow is similar. I try to get as much done in Adobe Camera Raw as possible, but I prefer to sharpen in PS compared to sharpening in ACR. Once I have the raw files converted to tiff I can give individual attention to those that need it, and then set PS to do batch processing that needs to be done,for instance toning effects and general sharpening. When I'm all finished I use the Image Processor in Photoshop to convert all the tiffs to jpeg and save.

 

[Tighearnach]

Well im using the canon software at the moment to convert raws and gimp for processing.

Is adobe camera raw an easy to learn application. does it have automatic features? (im lazy!) would it work well with photoshop elements (cant afford photoshop so thinking of this). I think my major flaw at the moment apart from the fact that my processing skills are nonexistent is that im not doing any processing in the raw format. they are going straight to tiff files.

Any good tutorials people know about that teach the theory etc. ones i have seen have thought the technical side. press this, drag it here etc. i think i could teach myself better if some tutorial explained these things to my simple mind a bit better....

 

[lockwood81]

My workflow....
Creat new folder for pics...2008/08 26/original

The load all the original raw files into this folder.
Now I open Photoshop Elements
I bring up the RAW file and check WB, Exposure, and so on in the PS RAW editor, then click okay and it brings up the file in Photoshop.

Now any sharpening or cropping or curves is done. Then save to the 08 26 file not the orginal.

Thats pretty much it...to cumbersome for a lot of photos but it works for me.