Digital Workflow

[Se7enUK]

If your like me then you will probably hate the amount of time it takes to trawl through your piccys and sort them out, tweak and then caption them.

Well I thought I would share my workflow with you and hopefully pick up a few other tips of other people of ways of doing things better or different.

I think a lot of people just do not realise the amount of time we actually spend post processing our images.

Well anyway here is my workflow and feel free to add comments good or bad.

1) I nearly always shoot in RAW these days and I currently use just 1GB cards with the use of 70GB Compact Drive unit that takes about a minute or two to dump a card on to. Its called a PD70X for those who wanna find out more.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/998/pd70x0vp.jpg
PD70X Compact Drive (Needs good batteries)

2) I then connect this hard drive unit to my PC (laptop or desktop) and download my RAW files to one folder.

3) I then sort through this folder using Breeze Browser and delete any that don't make the grade (most of them :) ) and also sort into sub-folders depending on the event etc.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/8903/workflow0015wb.jpg (http://www.point7.co.uk)
BREEZE BROWSER PRO

4) After sorting them in Breeze Browser I then need to convert them from RAW and to do this I use Capture One Pro. I like the workflow pattern in C1 Pro and have stuck with it, although its not the quickest out there. I won't go into the various tweaks but its mainly to add a bit of punch to the piccy or prepare it for B&W conversion.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/9854/workflow0022dr.jpg
CAPTURE ONE PRO

5) I then go back into Breeze Browser and caption all the converted images and then use CTRL D to open up an image in Adobe Photoshop to crop or add any final touches.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/8082/workflow0039bt.jpg

6) I also use Breeze Browser to help me create my web galleries, however I have added a lot of my own code to the templates. Click onb the image to see actual gallery example.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/9162/workflow0040nm.jpg (http://www.point7.co.uk/galleries/bsb004/r4_sbk_bsb265.htm)

Then its a case of a quick back up.

and thats my workflow really...

Let me know if you find this useful.

All the best
Paul

[gubbs]

Thanks for sharing Paul, you obviously prefer C1 to PS for your raw conversions, is that because it's what you're used to or are there quality / speed benefits too??

I had 500 wedding shots to process over the weekend to be ready for printing for the review albums by today, so needed to try a few new things in attempt to speed things up (well new for me anyway)

1/Used the bridge slide show to mark each image with a star (keep) or leave blank (cull).

2/opened up large batches of shots in the raw convertor making the usual raw adjustments but also cropping as required. I used the synchronise functions quite heavily but still checked each image individually. After each batch I hit the "done" button.

3/ Once all raw adjustments were made, I reopened the whole set in the raw convertor, selected all, and saved the complete batch, as tiffs into a new directory and left them to process overnight.

4/Using noise ninja's batch processor and the auto profiles I ran the whole lot though to automatically remove noise.

5/Used ps image processor with an action to make a slight curves adj and a light usm to convert to jpg's

6/Reviewed all the jpg's through the bridge re-adjusting (using the tiff's) any that required individual attention in ps.

Dealing with this many shots is relatively new to me so I'd be interested in hearing any comments, ideas or criticisms

[Se7enUK]

Thanks for sharing Paul, you obviously prefer C1 to PS for your raw conversions, is that because it's what you're used to or are there quality / speed benefits too??

I had 500 wedding shots to process over the weekend to be ready for printing for the review albums by today, so needed to try a few new things in attempt to speed things up (well new for me anyway)

1/Used the bridge slide show to mark each image with a star (keep) or leave blank (cull).

2/opened up large batches of shots in the raw convertor making the usual raw adjustments but also cropping as required. I used the synchronise functions quite heavily but still checked each image individually. After each batch I hit the "done" button.

3/ Once all raw adjustments were made, I reopened the whole set in the raw convertor, selected all, and saved the complete batch, as tiffs into a new directory and left them to process overnight.

4/Using noise ninja's batch processor and the auto profiles I ran the whole lot though to automatically remove noise.

5/Used ps image processor with an action to make a slight curves adj and a light usm to convert to jpg's

6/Reviewed all the jpg's through the bridge re-adjusting (using the tiff's) any that required individual attention in ps.

Dealing with this many shots is relatively new to me so I'd be interested in hearing any comments, ideas or criticisms

Breeze Browser is where the speed comes into its own, its a lot quicker and easier than Bridge. C1 I like the way you can be processing them while looking at others etc.

[CookieS]

Wow, thanks for the sharing, I have breezbroswer and use it for my canon stuff, im not crazy about its raw conversion ( lucily i dont shoot raw alot)
Breezebrowser also doesnt do well with the NiKON raw. So I use the CS@ and bridge and RAW converter If i do shoot RAW with the NIKON. Breezebroser if wonderful for all my horse show proofing. Ive never used it for web pages before. Il have to look into it.

[Se7enUK]

No I tend not to use Breeze Browser for RAW conversion, hence nipping into Capture One Pro.