Basic Concepts of my Digital Workflow

[Jim Bryant]

Basic Concepts of my Digital Workflow – As a photographer is it very important to keep abreast of the technology and advances of digital photography. From experiences gathered while working with newspapers, wire services and magazines while things may change within the technology, there are basic digital imaging workflow concepts that remain constant. There are steps are:
1. Planning the shoot
2. Taking the images
3. File Format --I shoot almost exclusively with a Canon DSLR camera in RAW format. Shooting RAW images allows me to easily make adjustments to the color temperature and exposure (often up to two stops in either direction) of my shots in Photoshop Camera RAW. I am usually very sure that the color temperature settings in my camera match the lighting that I am using; however just like everyone else I occasionally make mistakes. The same is true for manually setting the aperture and shutter speed. Once in a while I find it necessary to make exposure adjustments to an otherwise decent image after a shoot. One example of when this occurs most often to me is with images I shot as the sun was rising or setting. Dusk and dawn lighting changes so quickly and is so dynamic that it is easy to slightly underexpose or overexpose a series of shots. Because RAW images are lossless and contain all the information available in the photograph, this format offers a great deal more latitude than JPEGs. If I need a large number of JPEGs (e.g. a client request or to post on the web), I can always convert them using Photoshop’s or Photomechanics batch processing feature to automatically resize and save many RAW images into JPEGs in a very short period of time..
4. Copying the images to the computer - Immediately after shooting a series of images, I copy them to my computer using a compact flash (CF) card reader. I never connect the camera directly to the computer. This method is going to be much slower, more awkward, and needlessly wastes the camera battery. Transferring images this way also ties up your camera and forces you wait before you can shoot again. Most CF card readers connect directly to the computer with USB 2.0 or Firewire cables and are relatively inexpensive. Just pop the CF card into the reader and copy the images onto a desktop folder.
5. Editing -- With all of the RAW images safely backed up to DVD, I now open the originals in either Photo Mechanics I I use Photo Mechanics because it's faster editing program on planet) or Adobe Bridge to edit them. First I delete the ones that are obviously no good. This includes images that are out of focus, poorly composed, or seriously defective in some way. After deleting the ones that are clearly not going to make the cut, I rate the top tier shots. Either Photomechanics or Adobe Bridge allows me to rate the images either by color or by assigning a one through five star rating. I usually give the images that I am happy with and plan to move further along into the workflow process a five star rating. Oftentimes this is where I stop. I tend to be all or nothing with my shots; either they are good enough to move forward in the workflow or they are not. Occasionally I will assign images a four or three star rating if I like them for some reason but know that I will not likely use them right away. Rating the images helps to quickly identify the shots that I may want to take into Photoshop to fully process later on. I also use Photomechanics to rename the images filename that are waiting in a master folder along with the rest of my previous unedited images.
6. Post Processing the images - After sorting through and rating my images, I open up the ones given a five star rating to in Camera Raw. I make any necessary adjustments to the color temperature, tint, exposure, shadows, and brightness settings for each photograph. I do not apply contrast, saturation, sharpening, or any other adjustments at this point. I leave these adjustments for Photoshop where I can use layers and non-destructive processing. Oftentimes I can synchronize these adjustments in Camera RAW if the images I am working on where shot under the same lighting conditions (e.g. studio lighting).
After making the necessary changes in Camera Raw, I open the selected images in Photoshop. Next I create an adjustment layer for levels. I establish the black and white points while individually moving the two end sliders inward until I just start to see color show through the black. Using this clipping preview option is a great way of ensuring that the images doesn’t loose highlight and shadow detail. My last levels adjustment is to the middle brightness slider. I move this left or right to suit my taste.
After making a levels adjustment, I create an adjustment layer for curves. This is where I boost or soften the contrast depending on the direction I wish to take the image. Each image is unique and requires its own precise adjustment. More often that not, I create a soft “S” curve which brightens the highlights while darkening the black tones. This type of curve can boost contrast just enough to make the photograph pop.
In almost every instance I make levels and curves adjustments to all of my shots. Beyond that, any other adjustment depends on what the image needs and what I wish to achieve with the photograph. This could include saturation adjustments, dodging and burning, cloning and healing, sharpening, and blurring. I always work on adjustment layers so that I can go back and make changes later if necessary.
If I choose to enhance saturation in a specific shot, I work with each color individually and rarely exceed 30 on the saturation slider. Lastly I set the desired picture size in either inches or picas, resolution and then sharpen.
7. Saving Images - While processing images in Photoshop I periodically save them as a TIFF files. Many photographers save their processed, layered shots as Photoshop files (PSD); however I have found that TIFF files are slightly smaller than comparable PSD files. For this reason, I save everything I process as TIFFs using LZW compression. LZW provides for lossless compression and if fairly compatible with most current image viewing programs. I Save my original processed images in a lossless format such as TIFF or PSD. Even it I shoot all my images as JPEGs, I consider saving any of the ones processed in Photoshop as TIFFs or PSD so that changes can be made to the adjustment layers.
8. Metadata -- After sorting and rating my images I then apply cutline information, copyright and keyword search information. I streamline the process by batch processing the images where I add copyright information to all the images I shot when I finished with the editing process in Photomechanics.
9. File Delivery – Is the handling the digital images files from person to person and device to device. This requires the understanding and applying all the concepts of digital photography, that is color management, file, resolution, sharpening and metadata.
10. Archiving – An effective archive not only preserves the images. But also organizes them in a way that makes it searchable and available both now and in the future.
One of the biggest challenges to preserving the digital images is the long-term readability of file formats. All my image files are saved to DVD’s and stored in external Hard Drives.

[jocelynaz]

Thanks so much, Jim for sharing this! It has definitely helped me get an understanding of how you can process so many photos so quickly. I already see some big steps that I need to incorporate in my own process. The biggest being rating my images -- surprisingly, I never really considered implementing this. I knew it would probably help, but I just haven't thought to do it. So, I keep going back through all the photos each time to see what I want to edit. (Yeah, I know...how can I not incorporate rating my photos?? I see now that I need to!)

Question for you...In your reply to my post (time spent on pp'g), when you say you can process 1000-2000 photos in an hour, I'm assuming then that you are not actually editing all of these photos in Photoshop (adjusting sharpening, curves, contrast, etc)? Out of the 1000-2000 photos,, what is the % you generally process in Photoshop?

When I think of the term "post processing", I think of the amount of time I actually edit photos in Photoshop. And for me, right now, it can take anywhere between 6 - 10 hours for a shoot (maybe more if I'm really picky!).

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by jocelynaz

Thanks so much, Jim for sharing this! It has definitely helped me get an understanding of how you can process so many photos so quickly. I already see some big steps that I need to incorporate in my own process. The biggest being rating my images -- surprisingly, I never really considered implementing this. I knew it would probably help, but I just haven't thought to do it. So, I keep going back through all the photos each time to see what I want to edit. (Yeah, I know...how can I not incorporate rating my photos?? I see now that I need to!)

Question for you...In your reply to my post (time spent on pp'g), when you say you can process 1000-2000 photos in an hour, I'm assuming then that you are not actually editing all of these photos in Photoshop (adjusting sharpening, curves, contrast, etc)? Out of the 1000-2000 photos,, what is the % you generally process in Photoshop?

When I think of the term "post processing", I think of the amount of time I actually edit photos in Photoshop. And for me, right now, it can take anywhere between 6 - 10 hours for a shoot (maybe more if I'm really picky!).

I can edit about 1000-2000 images in an hour, not post process. I'm good, but not that good. I normally pick any where from 200-400 of the very best to post process that go up on the website to sell. That post processing takes me between 2-3 hours. But those aren't the final prints. Once someone places an order, I go back into that image to make sure the curves, color balance, color saturation and contrast is A OK.

Not only do I perform a star rating, but in Photo Mechanics I can also tag the photo. When finished, all I have to do is perform a View - tagged and only those images that were tagged will pop up on the screen. I then perform a select all and "save as" TIFFS that go into a new folder called Regional Wrestling TIFFS Edit (whatever my slug is). So in the master folder I have the RAW images, then another folder of the edited TIFFS. When each of those TIFFS are post processed and saved, I perform another "select all" and "save as" to convert to jpegs that go into another new folder called Regional Wrestling jpgs web. I know, sort of redundant, but there's a method to my madness.

[jocelynaz]

Thanks again, Jim! Okay, it's all making much more sense to me now.

I am doing a lot of similar steps as you with regards to uploading and organizing my photos (just naming it differently) but again, the big step I've been missing is rating my images. Whenever I go back to edit a photo, since I have not rated or tagged my photos, I have to scroll through every image each time to get the ones I want to edit. Very time consuming, I see now!

I think I had a misunderstanding of rating my photos. I thought that the rating was only to mark my favorite shots and that was it. Never considered to implement it for showing shots I want to post process. (DUH! LOL) I love the idea of how only the "tagged" images will show up on the screen.

Now that I understand this better, I feel sooooo SILLY that I hadn't looked into this before.

[FDCPR]

Thanks Jim for a very good read. Since I know you use Aperture, as I do, I would like for you to expand your archiving techniques. I keep a backup Aperture library on an external drive, but backup the images themselves outside of Aperture to a NAS and to DVD. That means I have a backup of the library and the RAW files backed up in two locations. What is your strategy, are you just using Aperture or going outside of it for backup?