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I have a couple of questions, about workflows, and what people normally do. Sorry if they have already been covered elsewhere.

I have read on this forum to shoot raw, and I have started doing so. Do people normally just shoot RAW or RAW + JPEG? (I have a D50 - not sure if this is available on other cameras?)

I am using the GIMP + UFRaw to PP my photos.

Does anyone write down what changes they have made to photos whilst PPing? - Especially to recreate if they had to from RAW, or just have a bit of a stab if photos have to reconverted from RAW and try and remember?

What do people save their works in progress as, for maximum value (and changeability) later on?

Apart from Nikon Capture or NX it is not possible to Save as NEF again is it?

Thanks


Russell

One word - "Lightroom"

My workflow takes 1/2 the time with Lightroom. Import, do changes, export. Changes are non destructive (I used to handball 2-3 files, one in RAW, one in untouched TIFF and another edited TIFF then exporting to a web JPG). In Lightoom its the original RAW and then straight to the small web JPG. Changes are recorded in Lightroom too.

It automatically creates a "small JPEG" too for Preview and Slideshow purposes. Working all the way through with a RAW file means no degradation of file quality as per a JPG nor massive files as per multiple TIFFs.

Batch stuff, batch tag, best thing thats happened to my photography IMO.

Russell,

I used to use gimp and UFraw. I now use Bibble Pro. It is a great tool, it does do any changes to your NEF. You can see the changes you do, copy the same thing to another image, etc. Works great for Linux/Mac/Windows.

Once you start using bibble, I have found that I use Gimp less and less, bibble has most of what I need/want to do.

It won't save as NEF again, but why would you need to? If you have the originals and the changes you have done, that's all you need.

Bibble Lite would probably be the way to go for you, have a look at
http://www.bibblelabs.com/

You can get a 14-day license to try it out.

Well worth it, it is $69USD.

cheers,

André

To answer one of your other questions: I shoot raw + jpeg ... Mainly so I can have quick on (computer) screen previews before doing PPing

Hi Russel,

I normally shoot in RAW (only). I then usually use Camera RAW to process my shots.

Usually in Camera RAW I set the white balance if it needs correcting, play with any combination of the exposure, shadows, highlights, contrast, saturation, curves to my liking, and then if I'm not going to do much more more PP I just save as a JPEG.

If I need to upload the photos online I batch process the JPEG files to resize and sharpen them in Photoshop.

For a work in progress I might save as a DNG file rather than a JPEG.

I always keep my original RAW files, so I usually have 2-3 copies of each photo I keep: the RAW file, a large JPEG, and a small JPEG for my website.

I don't know if this is the best workflow, but this is what I usually do.

I can also recommend Capture One software. I particularly like the way it lets you spit out several different sizes of an image in one go.

rflower wrote:I have read on this forum to shoot raw, and I have started doing so. Do people normally just shoot RAW or RAW + JPEG? (I have a D50 - not sure if this is available on other cameras?)

forgot to answer this one. I only shoot RAW. Reason is that Bibble is so quick that I don't really need to have jpeg and if I do need to get quick access to jpeg's, Bibble has a batch facility that would convert them quickly as well.

André

I'm with Radar - I use Bibble and love it. The only time I shoot jpeg is in the studio where it's nice to have a reasonable size jpeg to proof, so I shoot RAW+JPEG.

Bibble has a few minor bugs, but they are GUI rather than processing based. On my machine the floating toolbars don't restore properly when I start Bibble, so I have to spend a few clicks showing some extras and dragging tem onto my second monitor. It's mostly annoying because I often start Bibble just to tweak one image then shut it down again.

That aside, there's no way I'd go back to any of the programs that don't store my adjustments en a small text file rather than a big TIFF. It makes such a difference to the size of my backups as well as the convenience.

Russell,
Not sure if you have Photoshop or not, however I've recently begun using Adobe Bridge to view my new images and open them in Adobe Camera Raw.
From here, i can adjust WB etc and once I've gone through all my images, I can save as a DNG file (which can also save the original NEF inside the DNG - if you choose this option). You then no longer need your original NEF file and the DNG remembers what RAW settings you changed.

After this, I then use a Photoshop droplet & action to convert all the DNG's into a PSD, with several adjustment layers included. Once this has run, I then can go through each image and PP it as I see fit, then resave it as the PSD again.

Once the images have been PP'd, I can at any time open the PSD image and choose to resize it to whatever I require, add final sharpening to it and save a copy as a JPEG/TIFF or whatever...

The DNG's become the "original" master files and the PSD's are the "processed" master files. That way, you don't have to worry about writing down what you did to an image and, if you wanted to give a different look to an existing image, you can easily make a non-destructive adjustment to a PSD file, make a copy and choose not to save it - retaining the original PP work you did.

Just another option from the many out there

I normally use Capture NX (previously NC) to do some adjustments on RAW files like exposure and WB. Then I send it to PSCS2 where I do all other adjustments. I save a master file either as TIFF or PSD (if I used layers). This master file has all adjustments but USM. Then I do USM for the high res file at the amount needed. I save this and go back in history to pre-USM step and resize for web and sharpen for web using USM. If I made significant changes to the RAW file I also save RAW in a different subdirectory so having upgraded my system I can afford to save more files and I end up with the following:

- unaltered RAW (negative)
- altered RAW (if big changes to RAW were made)
- TIFF or PSD
- JPG high res
- JPG for web

Hope this makes sense.

Alex

I usually do most of my stuffs in NC since I can copy/paste settings, and most images taken in the same spot should need more or less same, saves some time.

- Open NEF in NC4
- Make all WB/tonal correction in NC
- Save original NEF (so settings stays)
- Export to JPEG
- Open JPEG in CS2
- Make extra cloning, cropping or effect adjustment if needed
- Save JPEG in smaller size for uploading
- Upload pics to web

Yi-P wrote:I usually do most of my stuffs in NC since I can copy/paste settings, and most images taken in the same spot should need more or less same, saves some time.

- Open NEF in NC4
- Make all WB/tonal correction in NC
- Save original NEF (so settings stays)
- Export to JPEG
- Open JPEG in CS2
- Make extra cloning, cropping or effect adjustment if needed
- Save JPEG in smaller size for uploading
- Upload pics to web

Hi Yi-P,
Can I ask why you create a JPEG to work on in CS2, instead of working from the adjusted NEF ?

Just curious

Aussie Dave wrote:Hi Yi-P,
Can I ask why you create a JPEG to work on in CS2, instead of working from the adjusted NEF ?

Just curious

I dont really like how CS2 handles RAW with limited 1GB memory. It just go too slow.

Either way, the picture will end up in JPEG format and high-qual JPEG has not much visual difference withe NEF if you view it on the monitor. Nor does the printing if it is smaller than A3.

Printing off high-qual JPEG, or NEF/TIFF makes not a difference for the untrained eyes IMHO.

That is just to speed up the process as you do multiple images at a time.

I'm only shooting RAW, not JPEG or RAW+JPEG. With the two RAW convertes I'm familiar with I can see the images as soon as I've loaded them from the card. No need for JPEG.

I'm also very fond of the non-destructive workflow, where the PP/workflow tool never ever touches the RAW files, but rather saves all my editing and adjustment steps as a separate (tiny) file, and applies them on the fly whenever output (screen, file, printer) is required. The two programs I've used that work this way are BibblePro and Aperture.

Cheers
Steffen.

Well heres my workflow.. all for jpeg, however raw is pretty similar

1. Adjust levels and brigtness / contrast
2. Unsharp mask 300% / .3 / 0
3. Resize generally to 1024x768, smaller for web
4. Unsharp mask again, 300% / .2 / 0 (maybe .1 depending on how much needs to be done)
5. Selective unsharp mask areas of photo that need touching up
6. Maybe adjust the saturation ever so slighlty
7. Check for dust bunnies!

cordy wrote:Well heres my workflow.. all for jpeg, however raw is pretty similar

1. Adjust levels and brigtness / contrast
2. Unsharp mask 300% / .3 / 0
3. Resize generally to 1024x768, smaller for web
4. Unsharp mask again, 300% / .2 / 0 (maybe .1 depending on how much needs to be done)

Why wouldn't you just resize before sharpening, so that you only have to do it once? Just curious as to your reason for this...

To answer the questions...
D70 I shoot RAW only
Love and only use Bibble Lite
Extra changes made in Photoshop

macka wrote:

cordy wrote:Well heres my workflow.. all for jpeg, however raw is pretty similar

1. Adjust levels and brigtness / contrast
2. Unsharp mask 300% / .3 / 0
3. Resize generally to 1024x768, smaller for web
4. Unsharp mask again, 300% / .2 / 0 (maybe .1 depending on how much needs to be done)

Why wouldn't you just resize before sharpening, so that you only have to do it once? Just curious as to your reason for this...

More detail in a higher res image to sharpen. I find that its much easier to do quality sharpening this way (if that makes sense). Believe me, when your photos are being screened per se by a website (I upload a lot of my airliner shots to a particular site) you need to extract as much quality from a shot by any trick possible