File Saving Workflow

gerardo2068 · Jan 24, 2012

I use Lightroom 3 to organized my library. I have thousand photos (family photos, travel photos, practice photo-shoot photos and more). Although I have many photos I'm a beginner, most photos are snapshots. My normal workflow to the ones I want to do some advance editing is I adjust the RAW file to my like as much as I can in Lightroom then I export it to photoshop for some more editing. I set it up so it would export as PSD file to photoshop. I know the advantage to saving it as PSD is that you can save the layers and be able to adjust the layers in a later time. The only draw back is that I look at the file and I see it takes so much space! I'm wondering if I know I don't want to do much editing later, can I set it up to edit as JPEG?

Can you share your workflow for this situation?

How much quality I would loose by exporting it as a JPEG? Would it matter?

Any other advice, tip, iso on this will be greatly appreciate! Thank you so much.

rokvi · Jan 24, 2012

(lossless) tiff and psd files are reversible jpeg are not. Get an external HD they are pretty cheap now days.

gerardo2068 · Jan 24, 2012

That's what I figure and I have a lot of space still, I was just wondering. Learning by just doing research so I wanted to see other photographers feedback thank you for your input!

jolieteddie · Jan 24, 2012

I export to photoshop (elements, actually) as TIFF files (which I add to the Lightroom catalog) and then create jpegs if need to send along to someone else, but I don't usually add the jpegs to my Lightroom catalog.

I use the PSD format for projects that more than a single image, e.g. additional graphics, multiple graphic elements, diagrams, etc. that I create in PSE. That way I my photographs are either RAW (NEF) or TIFFs. If I see a PSD file I know that it is a different kind of project file.

gerardo2068 · Jan 24, 2012

I see, that makes sense. Good workflow

I don't have projects as I do this for hobby.

For simple workflow I set up Lightroom to export as PSD and that's all I save coming back from PS.

But many times I feel like I'm finish with a photo

Would it be better to flatten the image and save it or I should always leave all the layers? Also would that affect the final file size at all?

Thanks