A recent post about 'saving size' resulted in a discussion about 'workflow' so I thought it might be worth starting a discussion about this topic.
Around about 2000 I was using Nikon film cameras to capture images as slides which I then scanned to produce digital images. I attended a one-day course at Jessops Leicester HQ entitled 'Photoshop for Photographers'. It was a great day but I can't remember the tutor's name (He made lots of tutorial DVDs) but his lessons formed the basis of my current workflow. It was £35 well spent!
This set of processes for digital images was developed before the availability of Lightroom and uses the software that came with my camera, a free adobe plugin, and PS Elements (Version 7). It is a very cheap option as even Elements was heavily discounted when I bought it - total cost £35.
It works for me, does everything I need and I share it knowing it to be out-dated but effective.
I make pictures in my Nikon D90 and save them in RAW form. I have lots of SD cards and treat them rather like films - using a card for a particular photography project e.g Day on the hills or on location. When I get back to base I upload the images using Nikon NX2 which then allows me to view them with the meta data and select the ones I want to process. I immediately save the RAW set to a CD/DVD (Not had a failure to recover for over ten years but am aware of the issues of ageing)
Having selected the ones I want to work on (Old technology - paper list) I work through them using the following processes:
1. Open in Adobe Elements which launches the RAW plugin and allows some adjustments.
2. Set temperature (White Balance), blacks level & exposure to get a full histogram with no cut off.
3. If necessary use Fill light or Recovery to cope with dark areas or bright areas.
4. Open in Elements.
5. Decide if I want to use layers to process or work on background only. If it looks like a straightforward job I work on the original (Knowing that I can source the original RAW file and start again) for more complex images I use layers.
6. Straighten then crop to create the desired image. I usually know when I take the picture that it will need cropping to produce the composition I want.
7. The next few processes depend on the image but a typical set would be:
8. Adjust Shadows/Highlights or Brightness/Contrast to get the right tonal range. S/H if obvious issues with that area. I frequently use a Brightness/Contrast layer to adjust skies by combining it with a layer mask to darken skies but retain foreground brightness.
9. Adjust Colour Saturation either by using colour curves or hue/saturation
10. Sharpen using Unsharp mask with appropriate settings - default is : Amount 36 Radius 3.5 Threshold 0
11. Save as a Tif file with no compression in a folder named: D90-14-nn-Title with a filename of nnnnn(file number)-title. The picture always has the original file no in its name so I can find it again.
12. Once all images from a project/day are processed I review them and select the 'Best of 14' to store in a folder of that name. For this I reduce the file size to about 6Mb and name it with the prefix tf-nnnnn-title
13. Once a year - usually Xmas New Year gap I review all the Best ofs and select a Best Of Best ofs for that year which are saved into a folder with that name.
14. All processed images are backed-up to a Hard Drive on a regular basis.
15. I rotate SD cards so in the short term I usually have 5 copies of images - SD card, RAW file on Laptop, RAW file on CD, Processed image on Laptop & on External HD.
16. I clear out RAW files & Processed files on the Laptop once a year and recycle SD cards so end up with 2 chances of recovery - CD copy for RAW & Ext HD for processed images. This hasn't let me down so far!
Hope others find this useful - I can't afford expensive software so I do what I can with the above packages which are cheaper alternatives.
