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Work flow for newspaper Sports newspaper photographers??
I will be taking sports photographs for our local newspaper for the upcoming High School sports season. What work flow works best keeping in mind deadlines and the possibility of scrambling for the closet wifi hotspot to meet them?
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Prior to uploading, I caption each image, again using PhotoMechanic. Then I use Lightroom or Photoshop to do any processing that might be required (cropping, sharpening, etc).
During a typical halftime of a college game, I can use this workflow to process and FTP 10-15 shots.
Kent
"Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
Web site
Where within PhotoMechanic do you go to edit the photos using LightRoom or Photoshop?
There are a few ways you can do it. You'll need to go to the preferences and setup one program to be the editor.
Here's my workflow:
1) Chimp on the field (lock the photos I want to send)
2) Ingest into Photomechanic (copying only the locked files and applying the IPTC template in the process)
3) Quickly look at the shots and make sure they are sharp and in focus.
4) Select all and right click to Edit (there's a keyboard command that escapes me right now).
5) Doing #4 for me brings up Lightroom's import window.
6) Import the files, do any quick edits, crops, etc and export to a separate folder as JPGs.
7) Open the folder with exported JPGs in Photomechanic and caption and transmit.
Editing is not done within PhotoMechanic. After selecting and captioning in PhotoMechanic the saved files are opened in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Kent
"Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
Web site
You can use the PhotoMechanic Code Replacement feature to speed up the captioning process, but as you say you'll need rosters. In my experience, most high school teams have their rosters posted on their web sites.
Kent
"Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
Web site
The highschools in my area are horrible about rosters online. I normally go up to the press box before the game and take a picture of their roster book. That way I can compare what they have on their website vs what they have at the game.
My workflow is similar to the above: Ingest (photomechanic), cull and caption (photomechanic), --> Lightroom for editing and converting to jpeg-->Rename and FTP (photomechanic).
Depends on the deadline. If I have enough time to make it home or somewhere I can get comfortable to work, I'll go there. Otherwise (for high school) it's in my car.
Using either cell phone tethering, cell hot spot, school or McDonalds/Starbucks where necessary.
Post-processing in Lightroom or Photoshop is independent from PhotoMechanic. PhotoMechanic is just a program that allows you to view and manipulate image files, arrange and caption them, and append metadata to the files (among other things).
There is no unique file PhotoMechanic file type. Just use it to access any image file, pre- or post-processed.
Kent
"Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
Web site
When I want to edit a photo in Photomechanical I right click and click on edit and it takes me to Lightroom. From there I edit but how do I save it?
Lightroom is non-destructive, meaning that all changes are reversible and thus there is no actual 'save' function for an imported photo. To save you have to use the export function to make a new file. I use this opportunity to choose the appropriate file size. And anyway, since I shoot RAW I need to convert...
But maybe you are asking how you get the exported file back in Photo Mechanic?? One system is to have PM monitor the folder to which I write the exported photos. Other options are to just drag the folder into a new PM contact sheet, or just FTP after export. Normally I do not use PM after I do the final edit and conversion to jpeg; they're ready to be FTP'd.
Funny you should say that, as I am noticing the same thing. I was just playing around last night with batch editing in PS--something I have not really done before--because LR is really slow. Do you see an improvement in PS over LR?
I haven't figured out batch editing in PS yet. They call that actions, right?
For the most part, obviously I can do everything I do in LR with PS, but I just need to keep doing it to get used to it and speed up my process.
I've never done batch editing in PS, only in LR, but it's hard to imagine that PS is faster. PS is really designed to let the editor fuss over a single picture; LR is designed more for quick edits of a lot of shots, and to organise them. It does this reasonably well, but when I need to edit 80-100 shots while shooting live at a game, it can get pretty slow.
There are several options for that... From the 'File' tab of the toolbar, you can use the 'Save As' function and specify a size and quality; you can use the 'Export' function, and you can specify size when you FTP them.
FileZilla works fine and is freeware. Photo Mechanic also has an FTP feature.