Virtual - Pacific Time Zone

What is the workflow in Digital Photography? A digital photography workflow is an end-to-end system of working with digital images, from capture to delivery. It is comprised of a series of inter-connected steps developed by photographers to simplify and standardize their work. Simplification and standardization are the two keywords here because a well-established workflow process will not only help you in simplifying and speeding up the process of working with images but will also allow you to stay organized, improving your efficiency and bringing consistency to your work. The number of steps involved in the workflow process varies but generally consists of the following: 1. Setting up the camera and capturing images 2. Transferring images to a computer 3. Importing images into a photo application 4. Organizing and sorting images 5. Post-processing images 6. Exporting images 7. Backing up images 8. Printing or publishing images to the web. Setting up the camera and capturing images. The workflow process starts with your camera, so your camera settings and how you take pictures will impact your workflow process. For example, if you take pictures in RAW format, your workflow process will need to process the images than if you were to shoot in JPEG. Why? Because RAW images require you to process them before they become usable for print or publishing. RAW files also take up a lot of space, which will certainly slow down your import, export, and backup processes. If you shoot in JPEG format, you need to decide what color profile to use, what compression and image size to use, what white balance settings to use, and more. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, but you will have to decide what works best for you. Transferring images to your computer. There are many ways to transfer images to your computer. The first part is physically connecting your SD/CompactFlash card to your computer, which you can do with a card reader or by connecting your camera with a USB cable. The second part is the actual process of copying files from your card/camera to your computer. This is where you have many different options to do this. You could use your operating system to copy the files to a particular folder on your machine, or you could use software like Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, or Capture One to handle this process. I prefer to use the Lightroom method for importing my images. I heavily rely on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for transferring images and this application has simplified my workflow significantly because many of the steps described are now done within this Adobe lightroom. Importing images into a photo application. This step depends on how you handle the process of transferring images to your computer because some software will do both in one step. For example, if you use software like Capture One or Lightroom, these programs will both copy images to your computer and import them into a photo catalog at the same time, saving you a step. You can customize the import process and tag images with certain keywords / metadata and even push some image-processing presets to each image upon import, which will save you even more time in your workflow. Organizing and sorting images. Once your images are on your computer, you need to decide how you want to organize and sort them, so that they don’t end up scattered all over your hard drive. If you use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Capture One, you have many more options to keep your photographs organized. Post-processing images. Now that you have organized your photographs on your computer and within your favorite photo application, it is a good time to sit through and work on your images. If you shoot in RAW, and “most likely” if you shoot in JPEG, there will always be images that might need some tweaking here and there to make them look better. Exporting images. Once you are done working on your images, the next step is to export those images for print or web publishing. Again, there are many variables to consider here. If you are printing an image, you have to find out which image formats the printing company can work with. They might ask for TIFF files with Adobe-RGB color space, or they might only accept JPEG files in sRGB color space. Another important factor is the image size and how big you want to print. Backing up your images. While your machine is busy exporting images out of your photo application, it is a good time to start your backup process. If you have not been backing up your images, you should come up with a backup plan as soon as possible. How good is your workflow if your hard drive crashes and you lose all of your precious photographs? Don’t forget to back up your Lightroom / Capture One catalog as well. Remember, backing up just your photographs or just your catalog is not enough – you need to back up both printing and publishing to the web. The final step is to print your photographs or publish them on the web. For printing, take your exported images and upload them to the printing company’s website (if they allow you to do that) or copy/burn the files to a thumb drive/CD. If you have a printer and you want to print images yourself, you might not need to export images from Lightroom, Capture One, or whatever software package you are using – most of them support printing right out of the application and give you all the tools you need for printing. Basic post-processing workflow in Lightroom. I will show specific techniques and features of Adobe’s popular post-processing tool for photographers. Learning these techniques is very important, yet for someone who’s just started using Lightroom, other questions come to mind first. Where do you start? What do you do first? How to keep your catalogs uncluttered and organized? Answers to these questions can be extensive. I will try to describe a very simple, basic workflow I often use myself. This workflow allows me to keep my catalogs tidy yet at the same time helps me get to actual post-processing very quickly and in just a few steps. Many of you already have your favorite workflows, I’m sure, and some will involve different or more steps than this one. My goal is to get those of you completely new to Lightroom up and running quickly so that, with practice, you can decide on your approach. Table of Contents•Import•Pick or Reject•Assign to Collection• Process and Export•Final Words Lightroom is a catalog-based post-processing application. What it means is that Lightroom doesn’t work with the original files, but stores information about them – along with rendered previews – in a set of files that make up a catalog. More importantly with Lightroom, to edit images, you first need to import them into the catalog. To import your images, start Lightroom and select “Import…” from the bottom of the left-side panel while in Library module (hit “E” to engage Library module or select from the Module panel at the top of the screen). Alternatively, you can import photographs by selecting “Import Photos I will show the following: Choose Source –Copy as DNG, Copy, Move or Add File Handling Destination. Pick or Reject. Assign to Collection. Process and Export. 1. Export Location – specify where you want Lightroom to save your images. 2. File Naming – choose whether you want to rename the images on export or keep original file names. In case you do want to rename images, there are several naming presets to choose from. 3. File Settings – specify file format (JPEG, TIF, DNG, etc.) of exported images as well as quality. 4. Image Sizing – if you want to export resized images, this is the best way to do it (for example, if you want to showcase your work on a personal blog, etc.). Specify dimensions. 5. Output Sharpening – apply additional sharpening to exported files. Especially useful if downsizing images on export or for print, where you’d want to slightly over sharpen the digital file. 6. Metadata – specify how much and what sort of metadata will be stored with the image once exported.

Items to Bring:

• Have paper -Laptop-