The magic of workflow

[shorty6049]

Hey everybody. I feel like lately i've hit sort of a stumbling block with my photography. I feel like theres something missing from my photos, like maybe it could possibly be a good photo, but it just feels dead or something. I've seen a lot of really good photos on this forum, and i'm trying to learn as much as i can about the post processing of photos to give them extra character and such. so i'd like to as anyone and everyone, whats your workflow? i'm hoping some of you will post on this because i'd really like to know how you do it. I look forward to hearing from everyone!

 

[Garbz]

Card goes into computer and the images get imported straight into Photoshop Lightroom. The RAW files open in there and load the default curves where I do the usual inspections. If slight exposure adjustments are necessary I will bump or pull it, but rarely more than 0.5EV or so unless I fouled up taking the pic in the first place.

From there photos that are poor but may have potential I try a few things like black and white, or play with curves, if that doesn't work but I still want to try things further they go into Photoshop (although GIMP would really be sufficient for my needs). In Photoshop unless I am doing some graphic art I rarely go beyond adjusting colour using the curves tool, and cloning out minor distractions.

Sometimes if I think an image could benefit with a bit of contrast or added sharpness I use Ben's method located somewhere on this board to sharpen in photoshop.

I got addicted to Lightroom during its beta stages and I am slowly converting all the digital photographers I know. I strongly urge you to give it a try

 

[mr_baseball_08]

First post here, so take it easy on me..

I use Canon software to pull my images off my card and then open up Adobe Bridge. Next I go through all the photos and look for pictures that don't have acceptable focus or sharpness. If the focus isn't right or it's a bit blurred by camera shake (unless I'm trying to achieve an intentional effect) I immediately delete the picture and never look back.

Next I begin to open pictures in the Bridge Editor and adjust exposure, shadows, contrast, and saturation (if any is needed), in that order. I try to get as little clipping as possible while still maintaining focus on my original subject. Sometimes clipping can't be helped and people who stare at histograms all day need to stop looking at graphs and start looking at pictures.. Sometimes I'll tweak the temperature but I usually like what my camera comes up with and I believe this is a point where personal preference (P.P.) comes into play.

Next I select the best of best images I've gotten at this point. For a given set of pictures, I usually don't have more than 5 or 10 that I really, really like at this point, but I'm pretty picky. I then convert these images into .tiff files. Next I open these one at a time and make final adjustments and tweaks in Photoshop CS.

I almost always set the white, black, grey points first. I sometimes follow that by adjusting levels. At this point, I sometimes might add a bit more contrast or do some small color tweaks, but this another of those P.P. things. I then add any special effects I may want (whitening teeth, taking out small blemishes, etc..). Finally I crop the image or adjust to the canvas size I want, then add a bit of sharpening, save it as a JPEG, and I'm done.

That's a brief overview of what I usually do, and if I had been editing a picture while I typed that, I could probably could have gone more in depth, because I probably left out a few things. I'm not sitting in front of my personal PC as of right now, but I think I hit most of the high points. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and once you find your rhythm you'll continually find new, better, faster ways of doing things.

If you'd like more information about some of the things I do, or some clarifications about anything I said above, don't hesitate to shoot me a PM.

 

[shorty6049]

Welcome to TPF mr. baseball!, thanks for the people who've posted so far!

 

[Remi M.]

I dump the images to to hard drive (sandisk card reader, probably 5x faster then transferring from camera)

I shoot in raw+jpg so I go over all of the jpg's deleting bad photos as I go noticing good ones.

I load up the raw photos in photoshop. I don't let the raw converter do any automatic adjustments. The only thing I would tweak at this point is white balance.

Once in photoshop proper I duplicate the layer and work on getting rid of any dust spots and such. Cloning out anything I don't want.

I used to do allot of croping at this point. Lately I have learned to crop in camera

I do some work to the levels and curves. I shoot for as much dynamic range in levels and contrast in curves.

From this point forward any work done is highly specific to the image. Sometimes I have a vision of the final photo in my head before I even release the shutter button. So any work done is just a way of getting to that point.

Other images take more time and trail and error. I have some things that I try (black and white, dualtone...)

On some images I spend allot of time masking to change the light levels in some portions of the image. Pulling the eye towards the subject.

I save the file as a tiff with all the layers. Than a flat print ready tiff. Than I run a action to resize and build a border for a jpg for flickr.

Sometimes I can spend allot of times on a image only to realize it's no good.