Understanding workflow

The reality of the situation is (was) that I never really thought of creating a workflow for processing/managing my photographs. Bear in mind that as a film photographer I shot reels of film that I never sent for development. The principle reason for moving to digital was so that I could easily and immediately see the photographs on the screen.

For the first couple of years of having my digital camera I only used the software that came with the camera. It wasn't until I enrolled on a digital imaging course (C&G Level 1), at my local college, that I progressed to Elements and that came 'free' with the course. Whilst this was a gigantic step forward, with the exception of a little bit of cloning and creating some very basic collages (part of the course), I did very little processing. My workflow: take photograph; copy from card to pc; open in Elements; flick through photographs; select any I liked; auto smart fix; save, print. Long live "Auto Smart Fix".

Last year when working on the projects in TAOP I applied a degree of focus, but it couldn't honestly be called a workflow. But for the first time I actually started to delete photographs that were bad.

For exercise 1, because I did not have a workflow my first recourse was to the web. Unsurprisingly this turned up millions of workflow solutions, some of which were insightful. Listed below are a few helpful sites (in my opinion!), they range from basic to very detailed: -

            The Photoshop CS Digital Photo Workflow by Jeff Schewe

                        can be found here



Photoshop CS example worklow - presented by Jeff Schewe



            Develop an efficient photo workflow by Steve Paxton

                        can be found here

            Digital Photo Workflow: Post Processing

                        can be found here

            Fine Art Photography Workflow by Michael Ezra

                        can by found here

The basic elements of all workflows are the same, as per the description in the DPP file. The variation lies in the way individual photographers carry out first and second cut digital processing. Debates: -

Ø         How much or little to do in RAW?

Ø         Which file format to save/store images?

Ø         Levels or curves? Both, in which order?

Ø         How and when to name/caption photographs?

Ø         Contact sheets or not?

Ø         Final method for archival storage?