Help me with my workflow please..

[FatNakedGuy]

Hello everyone!

OK, just to start off, I've been shooting for three years now and still have NO IDEA what I am doing.. (is that too straight forward of me?). No schooling, very minimal books, etc. Life keeps getting in the way of learning properly so I'm always winging it.

The tools I own and use are:

Photoshop CS2
NoiseNinja Pro plugin for CS2
Lightroom 1.4 (I think?)
Photo Mechanic
Canon Mark ii N with a couple L lenses

ANYWAY, I would like to try to get my act somewhat professional and do things properly as far as workflow goes. Here is how I've been doing it so far... hopefully y'all can pick my bad habits apart and put me back together, but much better like a bionic Humpty Dumpty or ?

1. To start with, up until a couple of days ago my camera was set to sRGB mode. I recently read however that it is better to set the camera to the other mode (can't remember now..duh! Adobe RGB?) and then export to sRGB for web related displays AFTER post processing because more data is retained in the file with Adobe RGB than with sRGB. True or False? Thoughts?

Also, I used to shoot 100% RAW +M1 jpg but after running out of hard drive space always, and trying to back up a gazillion photos after each shoot, I switched to jpg medium only.... and to be honest, really don't know what I am missing because of that switch.

2. After Photo Mechanic'ing the pics to my hard drive from the camera, I used to fire up Photoshop and run a macro against all of the images to apply NoiseNinja and Kent Christiansen's Quick Retouch for Batch v.1 action before doing anything to them. The past two weeks or so I have been skipping the Photoshop stuff and importing the untouched images into Lightroom, tweaking somewhat, and then exporting them to upload to my website (skipping CS2/NoiseNinja/Kent action all together). At what point would I use CS2 if Lightroom appears to be doing OK? Thoughts? Oh, and on Lightroom, would it be better to go back to working with RAW? (can of worms, right?)

As you can see, I have no clue what is going on and really need to read up on what other folks are doing. All I know is that post processing makes a world of difference on what actually comes out of the camera and I would like to find the simplest yet best/fastest way of doing things properly with the tools that I have purchased.

Thanks in advance for any input y'all can offer. I truly appreciate it.


Rick
Weller Photography



p.s. I have a few questions about proper watermarking techniques but those can wait for another day

[cyclohexane]

I recently read however that it is better to set the camera to the other mode (can't remember now..duh! Adobe RGB?) and then export to sRGB for web related displays AFTER post processing because more data is retained in the file with Adobe RGB than with sRGB. True or False?

This is true with JPEGs produced by the camera. If you're shooting RAW files then you can choose the color space when rendering the file, as you save all the data anyways.

I switched to jpg medium only.... and to be honest, really don't know what I am missing because of that switch.

With RAW, you get more latitude to correct small mistakes in exposure and white balance; with JPEGs you still have some latitude but when correcting the results are uglier. All things being equal, with a RAW file you have more data to manipulate, and theoretically having all the data to work with will result in a final output.

I've been shooting for three years now and still have NO IDEA what I am doing.. (is that too straight forward of me?)

At least you're honest. With that list of software, you've basically taken a plate of spaghetti, thrown it at the wall, and are now trying to see what sticks. Don't worry, I've been there too. =)

Someone better versed in working with Lightroom can help you better with a workflow involving Lightroom, but I figured I'd share my workflow for JPEGs. This is very similar to the one we use at work:

Ingest with Photo Mechanic (renaming, adding IPTC data, etc.)
Sort through images, tag the best ones, delete blatantly bad shots (i.e. out of focus), color class based on interest.
Open tagged JPEGs in Photoshop (that "Edit" button in Photo Mechanic comes in handy)
In Photoshop, set Levels, Curves, Color Balance, using Adjustment Layers. Noise Reduction applied if needed.

From there, I save them depending on the final output. If I'm not sure, I save the files as TIFF files in 16 bits per color mode so I don't lose any more data by saving again as a JPEG and re-compressing the file.

For web, I resize to the desired dimensions, apply unsharp mask, and save as JPEG in sRGB color space.

For print, I save as TIFF after resizing to the desired dimensions and applying unsharp mask.

[Mr. Pickles]

Based on what your software collection is, I would drop either Lightroom or Photo Mechanic, depending on your preference or desire...

I myself do most (90% or so) of my processing directly inside of Lightroom, but that doesn't mean you have to. I import images form my cards directly into Lightroom, and convert them to DNG format (Some don't like DNG, and the native Canon RAW's are good enough). You can rename them upon import too.

Lightroom takes JPG's and RAW files, so your covered there. It handles a bucket load of editing chores. So many that you can go too far. For most people, it does more than they need it to do.

If you need to tweak images more, or go more aggressive on the Noise reduction, you got PSCS2 for those and Noise Ninja too.

For now, if you are not comfortable, you could skip the Adobe RGB format ability. It might get you in trouble later, but if you want to use it, make sure you know about converting it to sRGB for web and printing. If you images usually need a "lot" of post processing work, then you may want to use Adobe RGB because it is a wider color gamut and won't "degrade" as much as sRGB might (but you may not be able to see the difference)

Anyway, there is some thoughts. More may be coming. And as always, you know you can post more questions here and we will help you along the way. Post images in here too if you need help with this topic, or in the other boards for shooting style questions.

[FatNakedGuy]

Thanks for this information! not sure how I missed your replies the first time around.