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Digital Workflows 1: working effectively Digital Editing
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Digital Workflows 1

In this article:
Digital Workflows 1

  1. What is a digital workflow?
  2. Ordering Images
  3. Backing up Images
  4. Comparing 2 digital editing workflows
  5. Overview of the workflows
  6. Alternative workflows

in the next article:
Digital Workflows 2: A guide to Sorting through your Images

  1. Intro
  2. Ways to sort through images in Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Bridge
  3. What to look for whilst selecting
  4. Alternative selection methods

1. What is a digital workflow?

Your workflow is the entire process from taking an image to its final presentation form. It is a repeatable pattern or system of working that is used to increase efficiency, save time, and avoid making fundamental mistakes.

Typical mistakes that come from not having a consistent workflow include sending people raw files or unedited images, or ones saved in the wrong colour space or in a completely wrong format or size, or just simply having a hard drive full of duplicate images named something like final.jpg, final.psd, final2.jpg, finalfinal.tiff and finalimagereadytopublish.jpg or myfinalimagereadyforprint.

Using a specific workflow consistently will also enable an ordered hard drive and increase your effectiveness, allowing you to spend more time on the creative side of your work. I compare it to driving or cycling- do you want to think about either of these or would you rather make them instinct and focus on where you want to go?

After reading these two articles, I highly recommend dissecting how you currently work and trying to make it more efficient. If you have mastered one workflow, develop a second one. Having several workflows is like having different tools in your toolbox, with each one being more efficient in a specific situation. One tool, does not fit all.

A standard digital workflow includes the following points:

  1. Taking digital pictures
  2. Copying them into an ordered system on a hard drive
  3. Creating backups
  4. Sorting through them to find the best images
    *Keywording and captioning where necessary
  5. Editing images
  6. Exporting images for purpose
Essential Tip:
Learning a few keyboard shortcuts and buying a mouse with more buttons which you can assign functions to (like the back function – control/command + z ) are two hugely important steps towards the professionalisation of your photography and will save you hours and millions of button and keyboard clicks.

Later in this article I compare two of my editing workflows, one using Lightroom and another using three different programs: Capture One, Bridge and Photoshop. Neither is better overall or worse, I use them for different things.

1. Taking Digital Pictures

This is out of the scope of this article but as an overview, things to decide beforehand in the camera are:
File format: RAW or jpg
Colour Space: Adobe RGB or sRGB
Bit depth: 8-Bit or 12/14/16-Bit Images
Image size in pixels: (here I would always go for the largest size)

2. Ordering Images on a Hard Drive

My suggestion is to save your images in folders by date with a keyword:
year-month-date-keyword so 2014-06-20-Timbuktu

Depending on which workflow you use for editing, you can create collections of images from different folders without moving the original images or having duplicate copies of them within programs such as Lightroom or Capture One. This saves a lot of space and allows you to keep one consistent system.

I do however separate my work into three rough categories which each have their folder structure by date:
1. Commercial Work
2. Family Photos
3. Personal Projects and Documentary Work

3. How should I back up Images?

KEY MESSAGE: Back up in multiple places and at multiple stages. Losing data is a nightmare we have to prevent rather than deal with when it happens.

Consider backing up raw images, smaller jpg version of the originals, and your final versions of the images.

DO NOT RELY ON ONLY ONE SYSTEM

Storage Systems


1. Bulky External Hard Drives (3-5 years)

Relatively reliable, should be accessed every year at least to refresh the data. HDs live for about 3-5 years of constant use. I think of them as lasting 2 years to be safe. If this is your principle method of storing images, buy new hard drives and copy the old hard drive onto one.

DO NOT assume that these live forever.
USE a power surge protector if you keep the drive permanently connected to your computer.

2. Portable Hard Drives (3 years)

Also relatively reliable but fragile. Expect to drop them and for them to die. The LaCie rugged HDs are the best, and worth the money and reduced storage space.

3. SD Cards (5-10 years officially, 4 years is a record)

These are not designed as long term storage spaces and are prone to getting corrupted. They are flimsy and break really easily- with the two sides coming apart relatively often.
DO NOT USE THIS AS LONG TERM STORAGE

4. CF Cards (10 years)

Whilst durable and much more solid than SD cards (have had an SUV drive over one and it still be in perfect condition), these are also not long term storage devices also prone to data corruption.
DO NOT USE THIS AS LONG TERM STORAGE

5. RAID Systems

These use a series of Internal Hard Drives and are the best but most expensive solution for storing data long term locally. The good news is they can be updated with new Internal Hard Drives rather than having to buy a whole new system. My recommendation for internal hard drives are the Seagate Iron Wolf Pro’s which are really heavy duty reliable hard disks.

6. Online Storage

Here there are many new solutions appearing every day. While these are quite reliable, they often depend on how much you can pay and of course, the speed and availability of your internet connection. Always look into what happens with your data when you stop paying for the storage.

Free versions such as Google Drive, Microsoft’s Onedrive, Dropbox, icloud are great but offer very limited space. Nonetheless, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL OF THEM!

Paid versions such as Creative Cloud, GSuite are also great if you have the cash.

 

 

 

 

Comparison of Digital Editing Workflows

Here is a brief comparison of two digital editing workflows and what they are useful for.

Lightroom Classic

Capture One, Bridge, Photoshop

What is Lightroom (LR)?

Lightroom (LR) is an all-in-one solution from Adobe for your photography, from tethered capture, to importing pictures to catalogues to sorting to collections to editing to keywording to printing (bookmaking and publishing I do not use).

There are two Lightroom Programs. What is the difference between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom?

LR Classic CC is the traditional Lightroom. Adobe then decided to make an app for tablets and mobiles and had problems integrating it with the standard version so created a separate desktop program and also called Lightroom Mobile. They then renamed the normal Adobe Lightroom to Lightroom Classic CC and renamed Lightroom Mobile to Lightroom CC. Annoying, right?

There are also huge caveats to the Lightroom mobile version (limited space, poor and lagging synchronisation, no integration with Lightroom Classic) which make it essentially ok for a few images and fancy showing off to clients (handing them a tablet and letting them swipe and select images themselves), but which make it unpractical for a general everyday photography workflow. The workflow below therefore deals with Lightroom Classic CC.

What is Capture One?

Capture One is a program for taking pictures directly to your computer. It works with higher end cameras and has lots of settings which can sometimes make it a little overwhelming, but once you have lost your fear of that, it is relatively straightforward and a pleasure to use.

What is Adobe Bridge?

Adobe Bridge is a preview and sorting program which works directly with the files like an enhanced version of the normal finder.

What is Adobe Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop (PS) is an image editing program. It is the industry standard program for professional editing. It can also be overwhelming as there are so many possibilities. The most important thing in PS is learning what you want to express and what you do not.

Why Lightroom?

Although it is more limited and has worse live-view capabilities, it is an all-in-one solution which is readily available, easy, and requires no steep learning curve. It is also really useful for sorting images and creating different selections or edits without taking up huge amounts of space or having duplicate files everywhere.

Why Capture One?

It is an industry standard and has lots of nice features for working in the studio as well as adjustments for fine-tuning images whilst taking them, saving time in post.

Why Bridge?

Speed. It is fast. Previews load extremely fast (instantaneously if you have a good computer).

You work with original files. You can see and move images in their original folders directly as they are on the hard drive. If you delete something here, it is lands in the trash directly (unlike Lightroom). If you rename, it renames the original.

Why Photoshop?

Best program there is for editing as you can do pretty much anything you can imagine. Others are starting to get good but Adobe is the undisputed leader here.

What is this workflow good for?

Long term projects, personal work and event photography, where you want everything in one place, including edits and collections and ratings.

Why?

Keeping everything in the same place including edits and the original files etc. is great.

What is this workflow good for?

Commercial work, particularly where you have several people working on images and have no time for synchronisation processes.

Why?

I do not like using bridge for my sorting process for longer term or personal work, but it is good for a fast selection and commercial work as it involves the files directly and can be used to sort through images with no export process necessary to pass on images.

This process is excellent if you are working with teams and using servers. It allows for a good separation of tasks for:
Photographer (camera)
DOP or Digitech or Art Director (Capture One)
Image editor (Bridge and Photoshop)

 

Overview of the workflows

Lightroom

  1. Images are captured directly to computer “tethering” using Lightroom. This is not a greatly advanced tool in LR and lacks live viewing for most cameras, but is slowly improving.

    OR
  2. Images are imported/copied from a camera or card using Lightroom (good for a nicely ordered hard drive).

    OR
  3. Images are copied to a folder on a computer/hard drive and then imported to Lightroom (not recommended).

THEN

  • They are then virtually edited in the same program. The original is not changed and the edited information is stored exclusively in the Lightroom catalog. There is an option to save these changes as a “sidecar” file (.xmp) with the same name that contains all of the information if you wish to carry over your edits to another catalog for example.

THEN

  • The images then need to be exported into their final version (usually jpg).

Capture One/Bridge/PS

  1. Images are captured directly to computer “tethering” using Capture One. Capture One allows for a great live view where you can even upload templates (great for magazine covers or crops for example).

    OR

  2. Images are copied to a folder on a computer/hard drive and then imported to Capture One or the containing folder is opened in Adobe Bridge.

THEN

Images are sorted using Bridge (there is now the option to use Catalogs in Bridge but I do not use this).

THEN

  • Images are edited in Photoshop. They need to be saved as PSDs if you wish to keep the edits (for future changes*).

THEN

  • The images then need to be exported into their final version (usually jpg).

*Destructive and non-destructive editing processes are a question for another day.

 

Alternative workflows

There are many ways to work efficiently, these depend on what kind of work you do and how you want to work.

  • News/Sports Photographers:
    Use Photo Mechanic to sort through, caption and keyword images before either sending off or importing to Lightroom or Photoshop. Photo Mechanic is a sorting and captioning program which is uses embedded jpg previews and is lightning fast (even faster than bridge at loading previews, making LR look like a dinosaur). It is useful for turning over large amounts of files in a short period of time. It can also upload images to an FTP server.
  • Event Photographers where time is money:
    Using Bridge to do a first selection round before loading to Lightroom. This is faster than importing a large amount of files to Lightroom and reduces the size of the LR Catalog. If you know exactly what your client wants and are not afraid of losing a few images, this works well.
  • Product Photographers:
    Using just a camera and then directly into Bridge and Photoshop. Bridge and Photoshop have batch processing tools which allow for mass editing of images saving large amounts of time.

 

In this article:
Digital Workflows 1

  1. What is a digital workflow?
  2. Ordering Images
  3. Backing up Images
  4. Comparing 2 digital editing workflows
  5. Overview of the workflows
  6. Alternative workflows

in the next article:
Digital Workflows 2: A guide to Sorting through your Images

  1. Intro
  2. Ways to sort through images in Lightroom Classic CC and Adobe Bridge
  3. What to look for whilst selecting
  4. Alternative selection methods
DIN Inkjet Printing Paper Sizes
Digital Workflows 2: Sorting through your images
Digital Workflows 1: working effectively
Ben Chislett
Photographer, lecturer, studied Experimental Psychology. Critical and can't help it.
    Adobe Bridge Adobe Photoshop Capture One comparing workflows culling images Digital Workflow digital workflow comparison digital workflows Lightroom Classic CC photography workflow sortingimages

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