Workflow

swinnie

swinnie

swinnie

Soldato
Joined
30 Apr 2007
Posts
3,095
Location
Kent
Hi Guys,

I've always had an interest in Photography but never really done much of it. My Nan and Grandad however came up with an excellent present for my 18th Birthday - a Nikon D3000 DSLR with an 18-55mm zoom lens. In some ways my grandad prefers my camera over his Nikon D200. A lovely camera and I have been having some fun with it.

However, could you guys give me a 'good workflow method' for when you take your photos off of your card?

Also, any articles that you guys have bookmarked into 'getting started with DSLR photography' would be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance!

:)
 
I'm at work so can't rifle through my bookmarks but I will try and offer some advice (only a hobby for me so can't speak for how some of the pros on here work)

Get in the habit of organising your photos properly, after a few months of taking images I'm sure they will be all over the place, maybe i'm a bit OCD for this but for each days or trips shoots I will create a folder like the following: 2010-05-13 Trip To Wales
Lightroom does the dates by default but I used to do something similar before. This way Windows will list the folders chronologically which is a lot faster for browsing, also putting a decent description in the folder name will help with searching.
As much as I try and get my friend to follow this convention he doesn't and it's a nightmare finding anything.

For workflow, I use Light Room when importing, it imports from SD card to my Pictures directory and uses the above dating system on the folder. I then add the description to the folder name in Light Room. Then go through and delete the 90% rubbish/OOF/blurry shots so that I'm left with the semi-decent shots. For PP'ing the images I either use some presets in LR I have saved, or generally go through and adjust white balance, aperture, curves etc.
I don't use the Nikon software so can't comment on what it's like. I'm sure free alternatives like Picassa will be OK for you.
If you plan on shooting RAW then this codec pack for RAW files will be useful as it allows thumbnails in Windows.

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/

I'm sure others here have better tips, but those are mine. Enjoy the camera :)
 
Similer to BL, my workflow is:
- Create a new folder with a convention of date/title, e.g. 2010_05_14 Hols to Ireland and download all photos in this folder
- On a regular basis (not yet, but nows a good time to remind), use MS Synctoy to complete and backup to a separate hard drive for the day WHEN my primary data drive dies
- I'm a Canon user, so I use RawShooterEssentials to have a high level look through my photos to delete the dross

Then it's onto actual photo editing, which I complete within Photoshop3:
- Open the photo and where appropriate crop
- Check the lighting, contrast and colours to ensure that I'm happy with them
- Use tools like shadow and highlight to pull out the detail I want
- As appropriate use the healing brush/clone to correct for sensor dirt or other elements I'm really not happy with
- If I'm feeling ambitious, play with stuff in layers to add effects
- Unsharp mask
- Save as a JPEG that's suitable for web publishing
- Where appropriate, upload to my online folders, which are on photobucket
 
My workflow
1) Take lots of pics (normally way too many)
2) Import into Lightroom (Under a Category/Date strucuture)
3) Remove all the obvious dud/blurred pics
4) Go through again and compare duplicates, removing the worst
5) Flag any pics I think may be interesting or I can something with
6) Process in Lightroom, which will be cropping (making Virtual copies), exposure adjustments (loving the brush tools for this)
7) Then try the various develop presets I have on them
  • Normally b&w/sepia conversions for overcast pics or anything lacking real colour
  • Or Strong contrast/Punchy filters for summer pics or motor shots with lots of shiny bits/chrome
8) On the odd occasion load up an image into Photoshop to edit something not possible with Lightroom (e.g removing someone/something from a shot)
9) Unflag anything I ended up not doing anything with
10) Export/process to for web
  • Export TIFF (or any other uncompressed format) at full size
  • Run a script from Photoshop that resizes, adds border, inserts meta data and then saves a jpg at @ 70/80% compression
  • Delete TIFFs
13) Upload to various hosting depending on use
  • Personal website
  • Flickr
  • Facebook
Backup strategy

This may sound like overkill but have seen far too many people loss data that means something to them (both personal or financial):-

1. Images copied from Camera to main workstation
2. Sync job copies from workstation to Home server
3. Home server has disk redundancy
4. Sync job also copies to media centre PC in house for family viewing/extra backup
5. Adhoc backup made to portable drives that gets taken offsite
6. Images on camera only deleted once present in two other locations
 
Thanks all! :)

It's basically how I've been doing things, but wanted to get some more suggestions. I've got it all linked in with my backups anyway. Just like my website design/development work it's also automatically mirrored over many sources.

Going on a walkabout around the lakes that I fish at the weekend, hoping to get some nice shots. Also going to some local ponds/woods.
 
Workflow is very dependant on what I'm shooting.

For the moment most of my stuff is being sent off to people within an hour of an event. So for example the last thing I did was a smallish local gig.

Started 8 ended 11.

9:30 Healine group.

9:45 finish shooting time.

9:55 I should've finished downloading every single shot (this time I went into the pub whilst the gig was still going on and used the laptop and a pepsi.

10:05 Sorted out the metadata. I will have imported into lightroom and balanced out the histogram reduced contrast. I rate my shots and check the checklist to see which shots I need to send. I take my 6-24 shots. (12 in this case) and export them as TIFFs to a folder on the desktop.

10: 15 I open them in photoshop and levels, curves, colour. Resize to 2600px, sharpen and save the TIFF.

10:35 (so I've taken about one min prt shot on PP) I'm opening them all again and resizing to the web size. Sharpen save in new folder. Keyword the shots and upload them before 11:00. Full size files hidden underneath the sites layout for purchase/licensing.

10:40 finished all the above tasks. Catch the last few mins of the gig.

Thats the night done.

​
That was last weekend. My next one will be the same idea too. However, shooting things like sports/motorsport I just use lightroom with a sync'd setting if it's a bulk upload (72+ shots).If I'm expecting media sales/large prints then I'll just upload 12-72 shots well polished in Ps.
 
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