What's your workflow of choice?

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n64man120

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
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I was wondering what everyone's personal workflow is when processing digital photos?

I've been working on getting the hang of everything and developing a setup I like since the start of January. I think I've got something pretty efficient down so far...

  1. Shoot RAW+JPEG on camera
  2. Download to computer, put RAW in subfolder of JPEGs
  3. Select best shots, process those raw files in RSP for color/exposure corrections, export to 16-bit TIFF
  4. Open in Photoshop CS2, apply Levels, Curves, Saturation, minor USM, etc. Save as PSD
  5. Open PSD in Qimage for final resize and sharpening, then print to desired size.
 
My typical Photoshop workflow is:

-Noise reduction (neat image)
-Levels
-Shadow/highlight
-reverse USM (if necessary)
-Curves
-Resize
-Smart sharpen
-CA removal
 
- shoot in RAW
- use Nikon View to upload photos, browse and select photo to edit
- adjust white balance and levels with Nikon Capture - save as NEF
- clone out dust bunnies, crop, resize and USM with PS CS - save as JPG
 
Lately in Photoshop, I have been converting it to LAB, then making all my adjustments...Comes out better..
 
I usually don't do anything with them.

Make of it what you will but I have always said, if your picture sucks out of the camera, there isn't much any photo editing software can do to fix it except for cropping. Even if you do take a picture and the white balance is off, changing it with photoshop isn't going to look anywhere near as good as if you took it the right way in the first place. This is why I rarely after touch pictures.
 
Staples said:
I usually don't do anything with them.

Make of it what you will but I have always said, if your picture sucks out of the camera, there isn't much any photo editing software can do to fix it except for cropping. Even if you do take a picture and the white balance is off, changing it with photoshop isn't going to look anywhere near as good as if you took it the right way in the first place. This is why I rarely after touch pictures.
Click to expand...


Are you shooting digital? In raw? Your camera proccesses your photos too ya know. Adding sharpeness, saturation, enhancing shadow and highlight details, ect. But photoshop is alot better at it.
 
I shoot a Rebel XT. Actually, I do not use RAW. I remember back with my S30 that Canon RAW images took so damn long to decompress that I never used RAW. I wonder what that would take now since my CPU is many times faster than what I had then.

The times I do crop them, sometimes I wish they were RAW so I'd lose 0 quality but since so many my pictures go untouched, not having to convert them into PNG or JPEG is probably worth the trade off. I have been visiting this forum forever and I still have not seen enough compelling evidence for me to get hyped about digital editing. And I am sure I'd suck at it even if I did try my hand at it. I am sure many of you just use the auto filters but the few times I have tried them, the difference is so small that I really don't care. It is all personal preference though so if you think it makes your pictures look better, then by all means continue to do it.
 
I think I saw a hoodman cf card that saved your images un-proccessed. But all in all, a photographer needs it's darkroom. And photoshop is my digital darkroom. I do agree with you about making your photos right the 1st time, and not needing to fix anything. It happens, but I also get those images that can't be re-shot, and photoshop has saved them.
 
Rooster said:
I think I saw a hoodman cf card that saved your images un-proccessed. But all in all, a photographer needs it's darkroom. And photoshop is my digital darkroom. I do agree with you about making your photos right the 1st time, and not needing to fix anything. It happens, but I also get those images that can't be re-shot, and photoshop has saved them.
Click to expand...
And I really do stress the "if it makes you feel good, then continue to do it."

I sure do whatever makes me truely happy. I just spent $600 on the Canon 70-200mm F4L. I am sure a $400 lens would have looked just as good to me but of course I wouldn't really be happy knowing I had an inferior product. A big part of the satisfaction is in the mind.
 
Staples said:
Even if you do take a picture and the white balance is off, changing it with photoshop isn't going to look anywhere near as good as if you took it the right way in the first place. This is why I rarely after touch pictures.
Click to expand...

If you shoot raw, then you can make the WB perfect every single time... and look just as good as if you balanced off a 18% grey card in the first place. On top of that things such as raw exposure adjustments can help you adjust the output with a range JPEG could never touch.

No offense, but it's a bit ignorant to think digital photos will not always benefit from some processing. Photos off a dSLR are almost always a bit soft, some complex USM procedures will bring that photo to life. Other things including the dynamic range of a photo can be improved, making it pop far more than before.

This is just a small list of tasks which can improve your digital photos drasticly, if your serious about them. And if you bought some $600 L glass, and don't think theres a difference between it and some cheaper glass, well... I don't know what to say.

That being said, could we please leave this thread more to discussion on workflow routines from now on, rather than an argument regarding the need to PP at all?
 
Staples said:
Even if you do take a picture and the white balance is off, changing it with photoshop isn't going to look anywhere near as good as if you took it the right way in the first place. This is why I rarely after touch pictures.
Click to expand...

With RAW, you aren't changing the WB in photoshop. You're working directly with sensor data, so it's as if you're setting it in camera but with more flexibility.

Anyway, here's my workflow:

RSP for RAW conversion (white balance, exposure, shadow/highlight tweaks)
Neat Image
Photoshop to crop, sharpen

If I'm doing prints I'll convert color spaces and do another pass of sharpening
 
I'm kind of like Staples, in that I rarely work on my photos, though I do shoot in RAW in case I really want to alter images. I really wish my D70 could save both RAW and a High Quality, Large JPEG, rather than the current RAW+Basic quality Large JPEG.

I rarely find myself adjusting white balance or exposure, but I might do some curves and levels adjustment, nothing major. I don't do the auto stuff though.

And I mostly do it with Nikon View and Photoshop.
 
Ok, well I have one question then. Image editing has never worked well for me because there is not enough contrast in the picture. Is RAW actually a higher color depth than JPEGs? I have always assumed that they were the same, 24bit.

And if that is the case, then maybe I don't understand how the camera saves RAW pictures. As far as I know, it is just a lossless compression algorithym. Just like a JPEG but lossless. Comprable to PNG to a JPEG. Is there anything different between a PNG and the camera's RAW such as special extra metadata about the colors seprate from the contrast seen in the pictures?

I am asking because I never take the idea that it just happens. I must conceptualize how it works before I can believe most things.
 
RAW is essentially every bit of data the sensor captured directly stored to a file. You can take that raw file and process it how you want, being that it is 12-bits of data that you can turn into a 16-bit tiff file... there's alot more room for adjustment than a JPEG will ever have.

When you just shoot JPEG in the camera, it's the same exact process. Only difference is with JPEG, the camera takes the RAW data and adjusts color, constrast, sharpness, based on it's own algorithims and you get the camera's 'best guess'. When you shoot raw and process on your own, your taking away the camera's guess work and providing the options to 'digitally develop' the image exactly how you want it. RAW is like a digital version of a 35mm negative in some ways, if that helps at all.

fugu: How do you like neat image? Find yourself using it alot to clean up high-iso files? I've been considering buying it after using the trial, just seeing if I should spend the money.
 
I like it a lot. I do a lot of indoor shooting at ISO 800 and higher, and it cleans things up a lot.

Once you've created a profile for your camera using the target you can just batch everything up and it becomes pretty automatic.
 
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