Help me write a workflow for CS2

[Josh125]

I have about 300 pics that I would like to run through a simple workflow. I know the workflow is how to do it quickly, but I have no clue how to make it happen.

Any help or if someone could point me in the direction of a dummies guide to workflow I would appreciate it.

 

[Anewman]

Workflow from what to what??

Are you starting with jpegs or RAW files?

What are you going to do with the photos(display online/print/etc...)?

 

[Josh125]

A mixture of jpegs and RAW. For web publication only. Just doing the basics like sharpening, auto contract, color, etc.

 

[mabas9395]

Step #1 - Get Lightroom

Sorry its not much help. But Photoshop was designed to heavily manipulate one photo at a time and it just also happens to have the ability to run actions and things. Light room was designed to do exactly what you are describing, take 300 photos (or more) and quickly and efficiently adjust the sharpening, contrast, color, etc.

If this is something you do on a regular basis, you may want to consider the free trial of Lightroom to see if it helps your workflow.

 

[DueyDooDah]

Step #1 - Get Lightroom

Wow! Exactly what I was going to say. LR is the correct tool.

 

[Josh125]

Thanks, I went and checked out their site. Seems like a good program for my needs. Happen to know if the trial watermarks the pictures? So say I download the free trial to play with it, is there a tutorial on how do create the workflow?

 

[Anewman]

Lightroom is a great choice

But until then you can create a action or two(one landscaped) that does all of your needs. So after the image is open in photoshop one key stroke could apply auto contrast\auto color\desired USM\and desired image size.

In bridge you can select those 300 images and run above action on all of them(batch).

 

[deletedpenguin]

The nice thing about lightroom is that if you have a number of shots from a certain area with similar exposures etc., you can adjust one picture, and copy and paste the "develop settings" to any other picture you want. It sure speeds up white balancing etc. You can pick and choose what settings you want to transfer too.

 

[Josh125]

All right, thanks for the lightroom program. You all owe me 300 bucks now

Anyway, so the program is very easy to use. I've found the copy and paste tool extremely helpful....more so than using a workflow since a trip to WDW consists of so many shooting situations.

I fear this might morph in to a lightroom help thread, but oh well. So I have the pics in the program and happily working through them. My first question is once I make the changes in develop does the program automatically save these changes? I haven't shut LR yet b/c I'm afraid to loose my changes up to this point

 

[DueyDooDah]

Change are saved automatically. And, better still, your original picture is never touched. It's a modern miracle.

 

[deletedpenguin]

Ya, the changes to the pictures are "virtual". It's non destructive photo editing, meaning the original photo is never changed, but the adjustments to each photo are stored in the individual Lightroom libraries. You can always go back to the "zeroed" preset on the left hand side to revert back to the original. You can also step forward and backward through changes you may have made, similar to the "history" tab in Photoshop.