Dr. Strangelove...
mercphoto
Registered Users Posts: 4,550 Major grins
...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love RAW.
Hi. My name is Bill. And I'm a recovering JPG-aholic. I used to shoot almost exclusively JPG. I was afraid of the workflow that 1,200 RAW files per race would impose upon me. And most event photographers shoot JPG anyway. And this biz needs to be fast more than it needs to be of utmost quality. Then I got a 1-series and I shot RAW until I learned the ins and outs of the JPG settings on that camera. Then I started shooting night races. The conditions caused havoc on the exposure metering and white balance settings. RAW started becoming more of a requirement for those conditions. Daylight was easy, night racing was not. Vapor lights are not my friend.
Enter Photo Mechanic to my rescue. If I had to use Bridge to sort through all these RAW files I would have given up by now. There is a lot of good advice in Peter Krogh's "The DAM Book", but I do not agree with his endorsement of Bridge. In my mind its only viable when you are dealing with a relatively small number of files. Photo Mechanic seems to handle large number of files very quickly. It allows me to import, re-name and append metadata all in one operation. And I can send files to a Photoshop droplet to batch items. Its also the only browser I've seen that works intelligently in a RAW+JPG operation. There appears to be a reason why so many photojournalists love that software.
I think if I had not discovered Photo Mechanic I'd be going crazy over this many RAW files. However, if I could get consistent night exposures I'm not sure I would have ever gone down the path either.
The other thing that helps with this transition is the "display only" option at Exposure Manager. I upload small proofs (very fast) and get emails upon orders. That night I grab the original and do a final conversion, then upload that to be printed from. The good thing is I don't have to do final edits on all photos. The bad thing is the display versions are not indicative of the final quality of the print. This is especially true if I do large changes to exposure, white balance and shadow detail. I now no longer "upload and forget".
Maybe, maybe Lightroom will get good enough to let me do quick rough edits to RAW files and get closer with my proofs. But Lightroom has a speed issue at the moment which appears as severe as Bridge, plus the RAW adjustments in Lightroom are not recognized by ACR yet, which is also a bummer.
Hi. My name is Bill. And I'm a recovering JPG-aholic. I used to shoot almost exclusively JPG. I was afraid of the workflow that 1,200 RAW files per race would impose upon me. And most event photographers shoot JPG anyway. And this biz needs to be fast more than it needs to be of utmost quality. Then I got a 1-series and I shot RAW until I learned the ins and outs of the JPG settings on that camera. Then I started shooting night races. The conditions caused havoc on the exposure metering and white balance settings. RAW started becoming more of a requirement for those conditions. Daylight was easy, night racing was not. Vapor lights are not my friend.
Enter Photo Mechanic to my rescue. If I had to use Bridge to sort through all these RAW files I would have given up by now. There is a lot of good advice in Peter Krogh's "The DAM Book", but I do not agree with his endorsement of Bridge. In my mind its only viable when you are dealing with a relatively small number of files. Photo Mechanic seems to handle large number of files very quickly. It allows me to import, re-name and append metadata all in one operation. And I can send files to a Photoshop droplet to batch items. Its also the only browser I've seen that works intelligently in a RAW+JPG operation. There appears to be a reason why so many photojournalists love that software.
I think if I had not discovered Photo Mechanic I'd be going crazy over this many RAW files. However, if I could get consistent night exposures I'm not sure I would have ever gone down the path either.
The other thing that helps with this transition is the "display only" option at Exposure Manager. I upload small proofs (very fast) and get emails upon orders. That night I grab the original and do a final conversion, then upload that to be printed from. The good thing is I don't have to do final edits on all photos. The bad thing is the display versions are not indicative of the final quality of the print. This is especially true if I do large changes to exposure, white balance and shadow detail. I now no longer "upload and forget".
Maybe, maybe Lightroom will get good enough to let me do quick rough edits to RAW files and get closer with my proofs. But Lightroom has a speed issue at the moment which appears as severe as Bridge, plus the RAW adjustments in Lightroom are not recognized by ACR yet, which is also a bummer.
Bill Jurasz - Mercury Photography - Cedar Park, TX
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
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