RAW Workflow

chuckinsocal

HI Gang,

Last weekend I took the plunge and shot entirely in RAW. Since I got the hang of making the color adjustments, etc, I think that RAW is the way to go.

My question is about the work flow. What I made up as I went along is:

1. Open the NEF file from Bridge (CS3).

2. Make whatever adjustments I feel necessary in that first screen.

3. Open the file again from that first screen.

4. Make additional adjustments with the normal PS tools.

5. Save the file as a PSD file so there is no quality loss due to compression.

6. When ready to upload, save the PSD as a JPG and upload.

What I'm doing seems to work ok but I just wonder if there is a better or more efficient work flow.

As always, thanks for your help.

pyry

Bridge allows you to sync raw settings across several files, and you should be able to open multiple files into ACR at once and convert them as a batch. That should make your life somewhat easier.

Beyond that, the program originally made as a raw-workflow tool, is of course Lightroom.

f-rider

Workflow is quite a topic. Like most things in digital photography, there is a ton of stuff on the web to guide you and you'll likely get many replies. I have struggled with it myself recently since I shoot raw NEFs and choose to post process them in Nikon Capture NX (1 and 2, the latter being very slow on my computer). What I missed in using the Adobe programs was that they would not update the small JPG thumbnail after I made edits in CNX and closed the file. Going back into the Digital Asset Management (DAM) program, whether Bridge or Lightroom, the changes I made did not show up in the thumbnails view. For example, if I made a B&W out of a color shot using CNX, saved the NEF, and went back to the Adobe DAM program, it did not show as a B&W conversion.

I'm using a demo of Expression Media (formerly IView Media Pro) which DOES do the thumbnail update (a simple menu choice or keyboard shortcut) and EM also is a very full featured DAM application. (Many others don't work so well either).

My workflow is to pull in ("ingest") the shots from my card reader using Expression Media. I assign metadata, copyright, keywords, then go to work reviewing the shoot and rating the photos. EM has color labels that you can assign label names like "first pick", "post processed" and "pending post processing." Then I make those the viewable files, and open from there (open with external editor) into CNX where I make the edits. I close and save as a NEF and move on to the next one. If I don't get to them all (often the case) I select these and re-label as "pending pp" so I can go back and pull those up by choosing to display only that label.

Once completed, EM lets me batch process them to JPG for uploading to SmugMug or making into PDFs or contact sheets or slide shows, etc.

Of course, this is when I have the TIME to do all that... which is not very often !!

Hope this helps.

--Doug