RAW Processing Workflow

ukcatfan

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 11, 2001
Messages
5,271
I am trying to develop a workflow for processing my RAW images. I would like to hear what everyone else is doing and why? If you think I should change my workflow, please let me know b/c I am new at this. I am currently using Pentax Photo Laboratory for RAW processing b/c I need to calibrate ACR before it will look right. Here is my current process for my files from my Pentax K100D.

1. Capture image with default sharpening, saturation, etc.
2. In RAW processing I make adjustments to the exposure, saturation, contrast, WB, histogram, etc. as needed (no sharpening or noise reduction)
3. Export to JPG
4. Use Noise Ninja for noise reduction
5. Use Photoshop for sharpening (usu. Unsharp mask)
6. Crop if needed

Also, if someone has already worked out the ACR calibration settings for the K100D, would you please share them?

Thank you,

Kevin
 
Try out lightroom from adobe labs. It is very nice and is a great batch editor. Basically if you have images that have very similar attributes, you can change one, and then apply that curve, tone, ect, to all of the images. It will also let you slect all of your RAW photos and export them all at once to jpg, or tiffs.


I usually edit as I see then, that is to say, if it is good and I want to print, I edit it.
 
If your photoshoping after you save as a Jpg, then your losing more information than you need to..... Every time you make and adjustment to a Jpg and save it again... it compresses it with the lossy format.
 
I agree that you should not use JPG for intermediate storage. It should be strictly used for final output. Every time you open, modify the image, and save a JPG file, you lose more information because of the way the file is compressed. As far as I know, every series photo editing package has some file format that doesn't use lossy compression.

There are also other problems working with JPG files. You can't save them with layers. You are also restricted to working with 8-bits of color depth. Even in the cases where I shoot JPG instead of RAW I usually save to a different intermediate format for all my editing work.

I also second the recommendation for Adobe Lightroom with the caveat that it is in beta right now and is quite slow. Assuming that they improve performance, it will definitely be my first choice when it is released. It's truly a RAW workflow program rather than a photo editing package. As such, it is much more efficient for processing sets of RAW images.

The Luminous Landscape sells a really nice video tutorial on Lightroom.
 

First off, sorry for starting a thread and taking so long to get back to it. My DSL is out at home.

I already downloaded it and tried Lightroom. Unfortunately, it has the same problem as ACR. It does not officially support the K100D yet. The files will open, but it is only beta support and looks horrible. I worked on tweaking the ACR colors last night and got decent results, but I need a color chart to do this the right way. I do not want to spend the $ on the chart right now when official support on ACR 3.6 or so will likely solve this. I am also leary of using Lightroom b/c I seriously doubt they will be giving it away once beta is over in Feb. I already have ACR. If it is going to be free, why would the beta software disable itself at a certain date?

I agree on the JPG situation, but I tried a few tests leaving it 16 bit TIFF and compared those to the JPGs and all the way to 400%, I saw zero differences. BTW, I was saving at the max quality JPG. Also, the TIFF processing was much slower because of the file size. If I am going to do anything with layers, I would not use JPG, but I am talking about normal processing workflow.

I am looking more for information on what order you do things such as sharpening, noise removal, etc. and if you feel the RAW software does a better job or if the editing software does a better job. For editing I am using Noise Ninja and CS2. I personally feel the unsharp mask in CS2 does a better job than the RAW software, but I want to know what others think.

I hope I get a chance to check back on this before Monday. Embarq is not on my good side right now ;)

Kevin
 
I still mostly shoot JPG but have been playing with Raw a little more and I figuring that I'll probably do most/all of my WDW trip shooting in raw. At this point, I'm assuming that my workflow will be:

Batch conversion to JPG (not sure which tool yet - likely the Pentax software, Photoshop, or Irfanview)
Pick out the photos that I'd like to "put into rotation"
Out of those, pick out the ones that I want to do specific work on via Raw
From there, I'm thinking that it'll be on a case-by-case basis.

Most photos turn out pretty well "out of the box" so I am not going to worry about fiddling with every single photo - plus, frankly, there isn't enough time in the day for me to spend tweaking every photo. ;) Regardless, I suspect that batch conversion to JPG then one-by-one of selected photos in Raw is a fairly sensible approach for the way many will work.
 














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