Advice/Opinions sought on RAW workflows please
SteveLajoie
Registered Users Posts: 17 Big grins
Some of you may have seen my rambling as I climb the steep curve of converting to shooting and working with RAW. OK, I'm sold and converted.
Out of all the advice I have two possible workflows I could follow and I wanted opinions from experienced raw shooters as to the merits of each.
Camera Canon30D, Shooting RAW with colour space set to sRGB and at standard setting (no sharpening) and noise reduction off. I use Auto white balance although this is imiterial now.
I use Acdsee pro as my image management suite for catologuing and I have tried ALL the significant others some nice some strange but at the end of the day for image management Acdsee does it for me.
After much experimentation I have devised two potential workflows
1) RawShooter essentials 2006 (cricky I wish you could still get your hand on premium). Basically Premium is becomeing 'Lightbox' and Lightbox has a totally unuseable file control, all this shoots, albums ecetera, improting exporting why didnt they just leave the directory structure system like all real image management suites. I can see where lightbox is advanceing on Rawshooter in the development stage but that is by the by as you still have to export to CS2 for repairs etc. Back on track. Rawshooter you can set in your White balance and I find its automatic to being a pretty good guess most times. I go from RawShooter to tiff 8bit to CS2 and do my crops, lights and darks there, repairs of motts and final sharpening. Then save to output.
I do have a dilema in my saving of the files in that I need two and a half resolutions. First for web 72dpi 640x480px This is not a problem as I run 'Mikes Framer' to reduce, frame and water mark my web images. On my commercial shoots thease small shot also double up as e-mail proofs nice and small to be quick but reasonable quality on a screen. Second, I need 300dpi for printed mater, catalogues and things (I photograph a lot of specalist objects for a traditional Auction house and their posh catalogues). Thirdly I need my jpeg10 for SmugMug at 72dpi for photographic prints. Although I rarely need all three together. My motorracing shoots are 1 save at smagmug jpeg10/72 then framer batched to 640x480/72dpi pop the jpeg10's to smugmug and the framed ones to my current site. Alternativly, I save at 300dpi (now having read a post today I have switched off resampling in image > Image size so it does not grow the picture. Then framer batch to 640x480/72dpi for email prooofs.
Method two is useing DNG/Adobe RAW, from Acdsee I have configure my editor to be CS2, so when editing a RAW the DNG converter pick it up on the way in and offers me similar function to RawShooter however it's automatic is a million miles away every time and even the 'as shot' is not to good. so I deselect all the auto's and then 'open' in CS2 do my fidling then go to whichever save routine I am useing for that shoot described above.
What are peoples opinions on the two methods, who preferes which DNG or Rawshooter (read lightroom as it will become if the sort out the file handling). Adobe makes a very interesting case for DNG because RAWs do have a habit of changeing with the weather and being camera specific.
Is there a case just to simply run DNG converter and put all my master file to digital negative for archiveing? and If doing this am I loosing anything from the original RAW going to DNG ????
I eagerly wait your responces and thank you in advance
Steve
Out of all the advice I have two possible workflows I could follow and I wanted opinions from experienced raw shooters as to the merits of each.
Camera Canon30D, Shooting RAW with colour space set to sRGB and at standard setting (no sharpening) and noise reduction off. I use Auto white balance although this is imiterial now.
I use Acdsee pro as my image management suite for catologuing and I have tried ALL the significant others some nice some strange but at the end of the day for image management Acdsee does it for me.
After much experimentation I have devised two potential workflows
1) RawShooter essentials 2006 (cricky I wish you could still get your hand on premium). Basically Premium is becomeing 'Lightbox' and Lightbox has a totally unuseable file control, all this shoots, albums ecetera, improting exporting why didnt they just leave the directory structure system like all real image management suites. I can see where lightbox is advanceing on Rawshooter in the development stage but that is by the by as you still have to export to CS2 for repairs etc. Back on track. Rawshooter you can set in your White balance and I find its automatic to being a pretty good guess most times. I go from RawShooter to tiff 8bit to CS2 and do my crops, lights and darks there, repairs of motts and final sharpening. Then save to output.
I do have a dilema in my saving of the files in that I need two and a half resolutions. First for web 72dpi 640x480px This is not a problem as I run 'Mikes Framer' to reduce, frame and water mark my web images. On my commercial shoots thease small shot also double up as e-mail proofs nice and small to be quick but reasonable quality on a screen. Second, I need 300dpi for printed mater, catalogues and things (I photograph a lot of specalist objects for a traditional Auction house and their posh catalogues). Thirdly I need my jpeg10 for SmugMug at 72dpi for photographic prints. Although I rarely need all three together. My motorracing shoots are 1 save at smagmug jpeg10/72 then framer batched to 640x480/72dpi pop the jpeg10's to smugmug and the framed ones to my current site. Alternativly, I save at 300dpi (now having read a post today I have switched off resampling in image > Image size so it does not grow the picture. Then framer batch to 640x480/72dpi for email prooofs.
Method two is useing DNG/Adobe RAW, from Acdsee I have configure my editor to be CS2, so when editing a RAW the DNG converter pick it up on the way in and offers me similar function to RawShooter however it's automatic is a million miles away every time and even the 'as shot' is not to good. so I deselect all the auto's and then 'open' in CS2 do my fidling then go to whichever save routine I am useing for that shoot described above.
What are peoples opinions on the two methods, who preferes which DNG or Rawshooter (read lightroom as it will become if the sort out the file handling). Adobe makes a very interesting case for DNG because RAWs do have a habit of changeing with the weather and being camera specific.
Is there a case just to simply run DNG converter and put all my master file to digital negative for archiveing? and If doing this am I loosing anything from the original RAW going to DNG ????
I eagerly wait your responces and thank you in advance
Steve
EOS 30D | EOD 20D | S50 | EFS 18-55 | 28-300 L | 24-105 L | 50-500 APO/HSM | 580EX | Hoya UV | Manfroto Mono | Velbon UltrMax Tri | Don't forget the Tokina 28-210 I use as a paper weight
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