RAW + JPG workflow

mercphoto

I'm considering a change to my workflow but have no idea the logistics behind this. I'm contemplating a RAW plus small-JPG workflow. The in-camera small JPG would be the online proof. The RAW would get converted as I get an order. There are numerous benefits to this approach.

I could replicate this by shooting large-fine JPG as I do now, and have Photoshop create small proofs in batch, but by asking this particular question I also learn something new about workflows.

1) How do you rename the files and keep them the same? In other words, the .CR2 and the .JPG file should end up with the same base name. In CS2's Bridge it does not appear you can do this. The .CR2 and .JPG end up with different sequence numbers.

2) Can you tag RAW files with keywords? If so, how to migrate them into the proof small-JPG?

3) Anyone web pages or online discussions I can browse that already do this?

4) Would I be better off with iVMP instead of Bridge?

Andy

mercphoto wrote:

4) Would I be better off with iVMP instead of Bridge?

The MASTER OF JPGS after the event, your actions, your upload-and-forget - NOW you're considering a change ... OK I will put some thought into how I do it.

But first - TODAY - get "Real World Camera Raw" by Bruse Fraser. You won't need IVMP IMO once you gr0k all that Bridge can do.

mercphoto

Andy wrote:

The MASTER OF JPGS after the event, your actions, your upload-and-forget - NOW you're considering a change

I know. I'm feeling wore down by the RAW folks

I have competing issues (don't we all?) Upload-and-forget, very convenient. But uploading 1600 full-res motocross images last weekend was unbearable (35 hours!). This weekend will be another approximatly 2,000 photos. I have a charity bicycle race coming up later this month. I anticipate 3,000 plus photos for that. Getting that many photos up takes too much time, even on cable modem. I can tell by gallery stats that my motocross customers are looking at photos as they upload, even buying before all images are up. And they stop buying around Thursday.

I could do the same by continuing to shoot JPG, just using CS2 to create a smaller proof in batch. But why not learn something new?

I have 5G of CF cards and a 40G Epson P-2000, so storage space is not an issue if I go RAW+JPG.

chrisjlee

Andy wrote:

But first - TODAY - get "Real World Camera Raw" by Bruse Fraser. You won't need IVMP IMO once you gr0k all that Bridge can do.

is bridge really that great? I haven't used it yet.

photocat

chrisjlee wrote:

is bridge really that great? I haven't used it yet.

I am very pleased with it... Went to a workshop this week with Michael O'Neill, adobe's wonderboy, and I was stunned.
After that I started using it, and the batch possibilities are great.
I like it that you can get clear overviews of shots you want to work with, it is also nice that it can batch for you in the background. You can work on other pics in the meantime...

I wonder where Adobe will take us, Lightroom or Bridge.
I would say, take a jump and try it for a couple of weeks... It can never hurt.

mercphoto

chrisjlee wrote:

is bridge really that great? I haven't used it yet.

It does some things very nicely, but I've found you need to be careful about how many photos you put in one directory for it to chew on. About 500 is the most I'll do any longer. Too much above that and it crawls.

digismile

I use a script from the Adobe Exchange for Bridge found here. This little script allows you rename photos, update exif info, etc. One of the features that it has is exctly what you're looking for: keeping 2 syncronized names the same.

This is useful for RAW/Jpeg combos or Raw/XMP combos. Works perfect.

Brad

P.S. I found out about this little gem in TheDAMBook.

DoctorIt

mercphoto wrote:

I'm considering a change to my workflow...

ian408

mercphoto wrote:

I have 5G of CF cards and a 40G Epson P-2000, so storage space is not an issue if I go RAW+JPG.

I was of the same mind until Andy subtly convinced me I was wasting my
time with RAW+JPG(anything). I have seen the light. The p2000 can preview
your images and using Bridge in your workflow negates the need for JPG.

mercphoto

ian408 wrote:

I was of the same mind until Andy subtly convinced me I was wasting my
time with RAW+JPG(anything). I have seen the light. The p2000 can preview
your images and using Bridge in your workflow negates the need for JPG.

Thanks for the advice people.

The goal is to get photos up faster w/o making much more work for myself. The motocross crowd seems to loose interest in purchasing very quickly. So if I find that uploading small proofs (which happens much faster), then uploading hi-res images for print later makes for more sales, then that will work. Judging by a kart event today RAW+JPG is not the answer, because even the small JPG from a 20D is much larger than necessary and doesn't save enough time to be worthwile. Thus I'd be stuck with batching 400x600 JPG's anway. So RAW+JPG does not appear to be part of the solution after all.

ian408

mercphoto wrote:

Thanks for the advice people.

The goal is to get photos up faster w/o making much more work for myself. The motocross crowd seems to loose interest in purchasing very quickly. So if I find that uploading small proofs (which happens much faster), then uploading hi-res images for print later makes for more sales, then that will work. Judging by a kart event today RAW+JPG is not the answer, because even the small JPG from a 20D is much larger than necessary and doesn't save enough time to be worthwile. Thus I'd be stuck with batching 400x600 JPG's anway. So RAW+JPG does not appear to be part of the solution after all.

Have you tried Nikoli's batch uploader tool? I bet that would help a bit.

mercphoto

ian408 wrote:

Have you tried Nikoli's batch uploader tool? I bet that would help a bit.

I'm on Mac, so doesn't help me any. Besides, if memory serves, I've calculated that I'm uploading at nearly the theoretical maxium uplink speed of my cable modem service using Smugmug's OS-X upload tool. 8.2 MP files just take a long time to upload.

Nikolai

Mass upload

mercphoto wrote:

I'm on Mac, so doesn't help me any. Besides, if memory serves, I've calculated that I'm uploading at nearly the theoretical maxium uplink speed of my cable modem service using Smugmug's OS-X upload tool. 8.2 MP files just take a long time to upload.

I wish I could help you with my mass upload service (which is a "tad" faster than your cable :-), but since you need your pictures uploaded essentially the same night, even if you ship me DVDs overnight, it still will be next day, i.e. identical to your - slower local - upload without shipment lag...

However, if you switch to RAW + small coarse jpegs, you can upload those tiny JPEGs on your own (thus covering impulsive buyers), while sending me RAWs (or converted large JPEGs) on DVDs (overnight if need be) and eventually replace one gallery (with small jpegs) with another (the one with real mccoys uploaded by me and my trusty S*E:-).

The only problem with this approach is that I don't know how to make SM to postpone the order (so the actual print would wait until the large file is uploaded).

In any case, shoot me an email if interested.

mercphoto

mercphoto wrote:

I'm considering a change to my workflow but have no idea the logistics behind this. I'm contemplating a RAW plus small-JPG workflow. The in-camera small JPG would be the online proof. The RAW would get converted as I get an order. There are numerous benefits to this approach.

I could replicate this by shooting large-fine JPG as I do now, and have Photoshop create small proofs in batch, but by asking this particular question I also learn something new about workflows.

1) How do you rename the files and keep them the same? In other words, the .CR2 and the .JPG file should end up with the same base name. In CS2's Bridge it does not appear you can do this. The .CR2 and .JPG end up with different sequence numbers.

2) Can you tag RAW files with keywords? If so, how to migrate them into the proof small-JPG?

3) Anyone web pages or online discussions I can browse that already do this?

4) Would I be better off with iVMP instead of Bridge?

In case anyone is curious, it looks like Photo Mechanic offers a solution to the RAW+JPG workflow problem. According to a search of Sport Shooter, PM will intelligently handle the file nenaming issue, plus will take metadata from the JPG's and place into RAW, or vice-versa.

Bodley

Ok Bill "mercphoto" what's up? You posted this in my thread a few days ago:

As per process, it appears you are shooting RAW. May I ask why? Ask yourself if it is really necessary. I know almost no sports photographers that shoot RAW. The football guy I shot with last year shoots a four million pixel 1D as JPG and still crops the JPGs, sometimes by quite a bit. His photos are superb, however.

Now your knocking JPEG's out of your workflow? I'm confused I thought you were working toward in-camera processing.

Greg

mercphoto

Bodley wrote:

Now your knocking JPEG's out of your workflow? I'm confused I thought you were working toward in-camera processing.

Well, for one, I was just updating some info I found out about a question I asked awhile back. And for two this weekend has about convinced me to not go the RAW+JPG route after all. After listening to so many people talk aboutu how vastly superior RAW is, you know, I'm just not seeing it all that much, and man is it making my life harder.

I shot yesterday's kart race as RAW + small JPG. Used the small JPG's to preview, sort, rank and tag. Used those to upload to Exposure Manager. Will use the RAW's to fulfill prints from. But you know, I gotta get that metadata into my DNG's now, etc. etc. etc.

Since I was using a new camera I was a bit nervous about using an in-camera JPG, but I think I've figured out what processing parameters I want to use.

Bodley

mercphoto wrote:

Since I was using a new camera I was a bit nervous about using an in-camera JPG, but I think I've figured out what processing parameters I want to use.

I was just bust'in your chops - we seem to be trailing the same rabbit on several issues.

Which parameters did you settle on?

I do agree that RAW is superior but more time consuming. One thing I've noticed in some of my trials with CS2 is that when I shot Raw+L and processed the RAW files through ACR with auto settings that the resulting JPEG's (from raw at auto) were much better than the camera produced JPEG's. Manipulating the camera jpeg's in CS2 did not bring them to the level of the RAW-auto jpeg's. One note - I could probably improve the quality of the JPEG's out of camera.

mercphoto

Bodley wrote:

I was just bust'in your chops - we seem to be trailing the same rabbit on several issues.

Which parameters did you settle on?

I kinda like the Canon recommendation for the High Saturation color matrix, sharpening at 4 and contrast at +2. Supposedly even the max on a 1D Mark II is not as extreme as a 20D at Parameters 1.

I do agree that RAW is superior but more time consuming. One thing I've noticed in some of my trials with CS2 is that when I shot Raw+L and processed the RAW files through ACR with auto settings that the resulting JPEG's (from raw at auto) were much better than the camera produced JPEG's. Manipulating the camera jpeg's in CS2 did not bring them to the level of the RAW-auto jpeg's. One note - I could probably improve the quality of the JPEG's out of camera.

I did improve the quality of the 20D JPG's out of the camera and I suspect the same could be done of Mark II JPG's as well.

One thing I have determined is that working RAW+JPG in Photo Mechanic is probably faster than working JPG in Bridge. I'm surprised how fast PM is. The other neat thing is how intelligent it is about RAW+JPG. It detects the duplicate files and displays only one thumbnail, and in that thumbnail it says "RAW+JPG" under file name. If you rename the file it renames both. If you rate, keyword or caption it affects both. Slick.

If you are still shooting both I'd recommend giving it a trial run. Even if I go back to JPG-only I'll likely start using PM over Bridge.

juliejules

Bridge->ACR
I think you can do everything in Bridge+ACR.

Once your files are copied from your card to you hard drive, open the folder in Bridge. You rank them here if you want, then filter by rank for the next step.

Select All. Then choose Open in Camera Raw.

Select All. In the Workflow Options at the bottom, you can select a smaller size. You can also tweak the settings. Everything selected gets changed.

Click Save N Images, where N is the number of images you have selected.

The Save diaglog comes up and you can choose the format to save in, e.g. JPG, and quality. It also has options to rename the file, but by default, it just changes the extenstion to JPG, which I think is what you asked for. You can choose to save to a different folder. It does the save in the background, so you can go on to other stuff, as somebody already mentioned.

Voila! Between scaling and setting the JPG quality, you should be able to reduce the size of the files considerably. And you can do it in batch.

mercphoto

juliejules wrote:

I think you can do everything in Bridge+ACR.

Yes you can do everything in Bridge, but Bridge is pig-slow, Photo Mechanic is very fast. Bridge is also clumsy to work with in a RAW+JPG environment (which, admittedly, I might not stick to).

Now I haven't tried batching through Photo Mechanic into ACR, so I don't know how that works. So using Bridge for that might still be the best route. However, for viewing and rating at least, Photo Mechanic so far beats Bridge very handily.

In the very least, its been fun playing with a new workflow and a new tool, even if I go back to my old ways.

Bodley

mercphoto wrote:

Yes you can do everything in Bridge, but Bridge is pig-slow, Photo Mechanic is very fast. Bridge is also clumsy to work with in a RAW+JPG environment (which, admittedly, I might not stick to).

I've been skipping bridge and opening my images (jpeg's) directly in CS2. I use ZB to cull then open about 15-16 at a time in CS2 (one column using the open command). My production has at least doubled.

If I can't batch process - I have set my actions to function keys and now I processes the image in about 8-10 sec. after it opens in CS2.

Jeffro

mercphoto wrote:

I kinda like the Canon recommendation for the High Saturation color matrix, sharpening at 4 and contrast at +2. Supposedly even the max on a 1D Mark II is not as extreme as a 20D at Parameters 1.


I did improve the quality of the 20D JPG's out of the camera and I suspect the same could be done of Mark II JPG's as well.

Wow...quite the debate! I shoot MX too, and as I've said before prefer the "Set it and forget" style. I shot about 2000 MX shots last Saturday, using my 20D at large fine jpeg. Settings set in camera. Download to PC, then open each one at full size, I like I keep, I hate I trash. Took about an hour and a half.

Then I start loading the originals to SM. Sure it took some 24 hours, to get it all done, but I loaded a page about the days event on my site, and made sure everyone knew it takes some time to get the files ready for orders. There's one thing for certain.....you can not make everyone happy.

I have been getting great prints, out of camera, with both my Rebel and 20D. 20x30 posters look great, even at ISO 400 if need be...for both! Repeat customers with the posters, so it must be fine.

I don't want to spend the time with RAW when shooting sports, and I don't want to have to process orders...did that...switched to SM

No checking for orders each day, more time to shoot other things.

Bodley

Jeffro wrote:

I shot about 2000 MX shots last Saturday, using my 20D at large fine jpeg. Settings set in camera.

What are your camera settings (sharpness/contrast/saturation etc...)

mercphoto

Jeffro wrote:

Wow...quite the debate! I shoot MX too, and as I've said before prefer the "Set it and forget" style. I shot about 2000 MX shots last Saturday, using my 20D at large fine jpeg. Settings set in camera. Download to PC, then open each one at full size, I like I keep, I hate I trash. Took about an hour and a half

I shot my 20D the same way. I used Parameters 1 (netrual tone, +1 all else), but I still used a Photoshop action to add a touch of color punch and to do extra sharpening. Otherwise was all automated and batched.

I think I can get a Mark II JPG to come reasonably close as well (high saturation color matrix, max sharpening and contrast). But I shot last weekend as RAW + Small JPG just in case I goofed. And I used the small JPG to upload to Exposure Manager. Not sure I'll change for good from an all-JPG workflow however.

Jeffro

Bodley wrote:

What are your camera settings (sharpness/contrast/saturation etc...)

For motocross I've been using Contrast 0, Sharpness +2, Saturation +1, Color Tone 0, using large/fine/jpg files. I like the way the end result looks, without post work. Those same pics are getting published as well, so something must be right:D Like I've said before I can't please everyone, so I stopped trying

Jeffro

mercphoto wrote:

I shot my 20D the same way. I used Parameters 1 (netrual tone, +1 all else), but I still used a Photoshop action to add a touch of color punch and to do extra sharpening. Otherwise was all automated and batched.

I think I can get a Mark II JPG to come reasonably close as well (high saturation color matrix, max sharpening and contrast). But I shot last weekend as RAW + Small JPG just in case I goofed. And I used the small JPG to upload to Exposure Manager. Not sure I'll change for good from an all-JPG workflow however.

No matter what work flow you end up using...look at the good side you have a Mark II baby!!

Mike Lane

One thing I was wondering (mostly because I'm not that familiar with all of this) is couldn't you get a small version of the image from just batching the raw images? I know ACR (and I assume other software like it) will allow you to output a smaller image. Could you not maybe create a droplet that will take a folder of raw files and will spit out jpgs that are a specific small size and that are named and numbered any way you want them? That way you could easily incorporate a DNG workflow that allowed you to adjust the IPTC and other metadata with the raw and the jpg at the same time.

Again, I'm not too familiar with this or how to do this, but it seems like you should be able to make something like that work.

mercphoto

Mike Lane wrote:

One thing I was wondering (mostly because I'm not that familiar with all of this) is couldn't you get a small version of the image from just batching the raw images?

Absolutely, but its a matter of the time involved with creating those previews. This is why shooting RAW + Small JPG can be handy. You have the RAW file for editing, but you have a Small JPG for initial preview. The benefit to the Small JPG is that it takes less space on the compact flash card, but is large enough to judge composition and focus on. And it previews very quickly in your browsing program of choice.

Some people shoot RAW + Large JPG because they usually get the exposure and white balance correct in-camera, so they have an image ready-to-go, but they have a RAW file for those odd occurences that they need to tweak. For some people this is worth the storage space.

Previewing 1,500 RAW images in Bridge is painfully slow. Creating small JPG previews from 1,500 RAW images is worse. But Photo Mechanic seems to preview even RAW images so dang quickly that I'm amazed. Its almost instantaneous. I'm developing an appreciation why so many people rave about this product.

After a race I need to sort through the keepers, and then tag and organize the keepers, and get this done by Sunday evening. I can then start an upload going. The longer this takes the smaller the sales. So I can't afford to take the time to generate my previews from the RAWs, I must have them immediately. The goal is to start an upload going by the time I go to sleep.

luke_church

Mike Lane wrote:

Again, I'm not too familiar with this or how to do this, but it seems like you should be able to make something like that work.

Sure you're right Mike, you can do things like this, I do this for fast preview generation for long shoots.

Write a script for Photoshop that resizes, basic sharpening etc, and spits out a moderatly compressed JPG.

This way I have have something that a client can look at quickly, so they can select which images they want me to spend the time processing. This allows me to only shoot RAW, which really helps my file management etc.

I'd have to resize the JPEGs anyway, so why not just do it all in RAW?

It seems to work fairly well once one has explained what the effects of processing will be. I recently did this with a 1,500 shot session, all done and ready in an hour or so, it would have been quicker if I'd been using a slave machine.

Luke

luke_church

mercphoto wrote:

The longer this takes the smaller the sales. So I can't afford to take the time to generate my previews from the RAWs, I must have them immediately. The goal is to start an upload going by the time I go to sleep.

Fair enough then. I guess JPG + RAW makes sense for this.