Explain your workflow please... (from Raw file to...)

I'm a new photogropher obviously. I have the T1i and Photoshop Elements 8.0.

I'm looking for someone who can explain to me their process of viewing their RAW shots, selecting good ones, doing the PP to them, saving them to their temporary, and then permanent storage...

Here is what I do, there has to be a better way.

1. Put memory card into card reader.
2. Let windows extract the RAW files into a folder, then delete memory card.
3. Open Photoshop Elements, and select Organizer.
4. It recognizes new files and imports them into my organizer. (Slow process)
5. I look through them and delete bad ones by rating them 1-5.
6. I process the ones that I have given a 4-5 star rating, and just save them.

and thats it. The problem is, everything is still in RAW, so it can't be instantly shared, via Flickr, or e-mail or whatever, and it is still in the huge 15mb files...

I'm looking for discussion on a Canon RAW into photoshop elements, and how you do it, and tips on a good routine.
Thanks!

Sounds like you have a good work flow (and you're more disciplined than I). Just add a final step of batch processing the 4 and 5 star images to JPEG (perhaps resizing them). Maybe you can save them to a separate album to keep organized, then you can upload directly to Flickr. I just downloaded a demo for PSE 8.0, so I'm not too familiar with it yet, but you should be able to keep your RAW files and JPEG files separately organized, and remember to back-up both! FYI, I crop my images to 16:10 for display as desktop backgrounds, and resize them to 2560x1600 as this is currently the highest resolution of any 16:10 monitor. If I was printing, then I would crop for whatever paper size I was using, and maybe resize using a certain PPI (pixels per inch). I also would tag my JPEGs, as these are essentially your final product and those are the ones you want to keep organized, and just back up the RAWs like you would store negatives.

I don't have or use that organizer (don't have PSE).

Is it correct to SAVE the 4-5 star files? Shouldn't you DELETE the others instead?

I would NOT keep jpg's (export to jpg yes, for print elsewere or for web/mail).

You can open a series of RAW inside ACR (comes with PSE) and adjust things there, even without ever opening them really in PSE. That would be my next step (I do simular, but in LR).
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All in my humble opionion of course!

If I seem to talk nonsense or you can't understand me, it's probably my English

Do you have Digital Photo Professional from Canon? You could use the main window, where you see all the pics in the folder, to delete what you don't want. Then batch your RAW to jpeg. You could apply a recipe to process multiple pics at once if you wanted. That done you could then go to Elements to organize and process any jpegs you want to print or post. I have Elements 6 not 8. I don't know if there is a difference.

CityLights once posted his RAW workflow here.

I had it copied, and am sure he won't mind if I repost it:

RAW workflow is very simple, it just takes a little getting used to and perhaps a good RAW editor. I use photoshop elements. That is the best $89 that I have spent on photography. It has 90% of the editing power of full blown photoshop (and all the good stuff you really need) at 1/6th the price.

ACR is the photoshop elements RAW editor. ACR has the tools laid out from top to bottom in the order you should use them. (How can a workflow get simpler than that?)

1. 1, set white ballance. Menu selection is the same as in the camera, for As Shot, or you can adjust Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, etc. to select fairly close to the conditions you shot in. Right next to there is the fine tune white ballance controls to set Temperature and Tint if you are inclined to try and get the white ballance closer than the menu selection.

1. 2, Set your exposure. -4 through 0 to +4 for whatever looks good in the image preview. Usually an adjustment of -1 to +1 is all that is neccesary. Alternately you can hit the AUTO button for the program to select for you. There are also fine tune adjustments for Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast.

1. 3, Set Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation. I like +10 for each, but you can select your own depending on your taste.

That is it for the basic tab. Click on the Detail tab next for sharpening.

1. 4, Amount, take your pick. I like 25% to 50%.

1. 5, Radius, I like minimum 0.5

1. 6, Detail and Masking. You can view the picture at 100% and hold the ALT key and click on the slider to show the effect of both of these. Detail selects the details that will be sharpened. Masking selects the low contrast areas that will not be sharpened. I like settings for both 25 to 50 depending on the image.

1. 7, Noise reduction, Luminesce and Color. These both remove noise. If your image is noise free, 0 is good. Bump them up if you want to remove noise.

Go back and fine tune any settings as you like, but that is IT. Done. Finito. Click on the Open Image Button.

Now you have a JPG that you can continue to edit with your JPG workflow or call done.

I hope this helps.

--
CityLights
http://www.pbase.com/citylights/favorites
http://www.pbase.com/citylights/show_case

See also:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1031&message=18079744&changemode=1
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Regards,
Lionel
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lionel_johnson/

'It may be that your purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.'

I haven't used PSE but I like LR2 for a workflow.

• 2 minutes Copy files to a year\date_subject\ structure, example: 2010\2010-01-01 fireworks\
• I do an initial selection using irfan view. It's a very fast workflow. I can trawl through about 500 images in 20 mins for an initial selection. Use F7 to move to a subfolder like selection. I copy the path from an explorer window, paste in in position 10 (shortcut key 0) add \selection at the end (I usually replace the old path and leave \selection there). Then for a keeper I press F7 followed by 0. Use arrow keys to advance to the next image (or setup irfan view to auto advance after move). What's left will be deleted.
• Import those in LR (import is really quick, using a E6550 dual core processor)
• processing about 150 images per hour for paid shoots. For personal use I spend a little more time, up to 20 shots per hour.
• Export to jpg is 2 clicks, export, using a saved export profile for small web images with sharpening, and another for print.

So processing say 100 shots off a CF card takes

• 2 mins selection -> 20 shots are left over
• 10 sec import in LR
• 30 mins processing 10 from the 20 I've imported (copy settings to similar shots really reduces the amount of time spent)
• 5 seconds, Marking the really good images with color red, say 5 shots
• 5 secs Filter on red so only marked shots are displayed, select all, export for 1280x853+sharpen and full size (4 mouse clicks)
• LR will process the export in the background, processes about 2 shots per second

All in all it took me 34 mins 20 seconds for 100 shots

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Kind regards
Imqqmi



http://www.pbase.com/imqqmi

Your flow is almost the same as mine except a few minor changes.

1) On downloading from the memorycard I do not delete straight away just in case there's a problem.

2) I have a pictures folder with five main folders inside labelled 'Aircraft', 'Events', 'Family', 'Other' and one called 'Download Into Here'.

Within these folders except the 'Download Into Here' folder are subfolders labelled by the date the photos were taken IE: 2009_10_21 and depending on what I was shooting it may be something like '2009_10_21 London Zoo' or 2009_10_21 Duxford Airshow.

When I download off the card all my photos go into the 'Download Into Here' folder which elements imports to the catalogue and only selects those new pictures.

I then have a quick scan through deleting any that are not worth saving.

Shooting with both a cannon (.cr2) files and fuji (.raf) files I then find it suits me to convert all the remaining pictures in the 'Download Into Here' folder into Adobe .dng format saving all the converted pictures into the same 'Download Into Here' folder.

I then click show all files and type cr2 into the search which then selects all the original files in the 'Download Into Here' folder which I select and delete.

Then all I do is select all the remaining pictures (dng) in 'Download Into Here' and drag them into a suitable dated subfolder within the remaining four options.

If this seems a bit long winded it is easier in practice

I don't tend to convert to jpg unless I'm either getting a shop to print or putting my better shots up on flickr.

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions. I am going to review these in depth, and continue to try and simplify/perfect my workflow...

This discussion helps me immensely, thanks.

For reviewing shots I've tried Lightroom, Bridge, ACDSee, DPP... and in the end I always come back to using 'Instant JPEG from RAW' to extract the JPEGs embedded in the raw files, then I view them with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (my default viewer for JPEGs). It's lightning fast, pretty much full-screen, swaps between best fit and 100% with simple chords (Ctrl-A and Ctrl-B), and avoids all that tedious mucking about with libraries, organisers, and such. But that approach won't suit you if you're not into working directly with files in Windows Explorer and Alt-Tabbing between windows (I started on DOS in 1977, so I'm very comfortable at that level).

Strokes_77 said:

I'm looking for someone who can explain to me their process of viewing their RAW shots, selecting good ones, doing the PP to them, saving them to their temporary, and then permanent storage...

Click to expand...

1) Import from camera into DPP into a central directory, "Shoots," into a new sub-directory with filename as Date_topic/location

2) Preview and select with check mark #1 (Alt + 1) the ones to Process [The next day I will go back for another quick pass before deleting the ones I didn't select - sometimes I change my mind!]

3) All I do in DPP is check/adjust White Balance

3) Sort by 'Check Mark 1', Select All of those, Batch Convert to 16-bit TIFF

4) Move the 'Check Mark 1' RAW (CR2) files to a directory, "Store" for later returning to the original file if necessary.

5) Open TIFFs individually in Photoshop; Process; Save the TIFF for printing, with a new descriptive filename. File accordingly: Name of trip; Flowers; etc.

6) Those to be posted on the Web: Convert to 8-bit for saving as a JPG.

7) Backup the new Stored RAW files and new TIFFs to external HD.

That's it!

regards,

-rich
--
Careful photographers run their own tests.

Hi. My workflow from shooting to posting on web.
go out, shoot some RAW.. shoot plenty..
i plug in my SDcard to my labtop.

i copy my RAWs into a folder ( i have organize my folders in years. in the years folder ive got months in the months ive got subject. ) depends on how many photos youve have got....

i open the folder in adobe bridge - in bridge i rate photos and can later set a filter of which pictures i want to see (depending on the rating).

i doubleclick the image, which brings it in to photoshop where i can change the exposure and the warmth of the picture, crop it, change horisontal line aso.

i do my photoshop stuff save it as a photoshop file, afterwards i resize the image and sharpen it, saves it as a jpeg, and its ready for web

have fun

My way of working almost exactly, in LR2.

Except i import directly into LR and delte from the "last import" group, that way you can delete from disk.

I have fast tweaks down to a minimum of time, and the beauty of LR is that it keeps your Raw images intact so you can go back and do it again.

1. Put memory card into card reader.

2. Use the Adobe DNG converter to copy over the files and simultaneously convert them to DNG (I have the older Photoshop CS2)

3. Open Adobe Bridge, and delete the photos that are obvious junk (due to missed expression or obvious missed focus, etc.)

4. For the rest, I open one (or several) at a time in ACR. If the focus or other technical aspect is subpar and the shot is ruined, I delete it; if it is subpar but saveable, I give it a low star rating in Bridge; otherwise I give it a high rating.

5. If it is a series of the same subject shot with the same settings, I use the previous batch of RAW settings. Otherwise, I season to taste.

• This does NOT involve sharpening, as that is best done selectively using layers and on the lightness channel only in my experience
• I do sometimes do initial noise reduction in ACR, however
• This is the easiest place for me to crop to a standard aspect ratio, so I generally do that in ACR
• I often use a custom tone curve as well as using the darkness/shadow slider, as this is an easy and quick way to use a good-looking curve and still crush the shadows a bit

6. Open in Photoshop, and continue to process

Hmm never thought about converting to DNG straight from the card sounds like it may simplify a couple of steps in my own flow.

Thanks for that