Digital Workflow, part 4

Dunstanburgh Castle at Dawn
Originally uploaded by thefatcat44

If you have read the previous posts in this series you will now be at the stage where you have a set of images worth keeping and working on within Lightroom 2.

By using the various sorting flags you can mark images with in Lightroom you can focus in on your very best images to process further.

All photographers have images that are okay, worth keeping, but in reality are not good enough to show the world. The world is not interested in them - they are just for us.

The wise photographer doesn't bore people with hundreds of mediocre images. Look at any top photographer and every single image on their website is astoundingly good. As a result we gape in awe at their skill. But rest assured, on their computer at home they have hundreds of mediocre stuff just like us - its just they never show this stuff to anyone else.

By displaying only our best work we hold our audiences interest and start to build our reputation. I recently overhauled my website and removed over half the images because to be honest they weren't up to scratch. The result, hits on my website have more than doubled and visitors are spending three times as long on average on the site.

Less is more.

So now we have in front of us a manageable handful of images we have picked as four star. Out of these I am usually drawn to that one image that stands out as the best from the shoot and am eager to work on it.

We select that image in LR2 by clicking on it and then click on the develop module. Here Adobe have tried to organise everything in the order in which it is best to work on the image.

I firstly, before I go any further, right click on the image and click 'create virtual copy'. This puts a copy of the file beside the original so you can work on this without affecting the original. If you are worried about taking up loads of hard drive space doing this, don't be. Read on and I will explain why.

So at the top of the right hand pane are tools like crop, level and rotate. Then adjustment tools for the white balance before heading to exposure adjustment, clarity saturation and contrast.

By working our way down the tools in this order we often get the best results from the image. Only use the tools you need to and I take the image into Photoshop from here to make my final adjustments.

I find CS3 to be better for dust cloning for example.

Up until you move the image into CS3 (Photoshop) you have been working on the RAW file. But in actual fact, although you have seen the image change on the screen the RAW file itself has not changed because of the way LR2 works.

A RAW file contains every single bit of information the camera caught the instant you pressed the shutter release. Once this file is in Lightroom and you make changes what Lightroom is actually doing is recording those changes in a database and SHOWING you what the image would look like if you made that change. Each time you go back to the image in future Lightroom, in effect, looks at the original RAW file and then looks at its database of changes you made and applies them to a preview to show you the effect of those changes.

This is why, at any time, you can click the 'Reset' button and all the changes will be removed and you will be looking at the RAW file in its original state again.

This is also why you can create virtual copies of the RAW file without taking up any more hard drive space. When you create a virtual copy all LR2 does is create a new entry in its database saying apply these changes to that RAW file and display a separate preview - it doesn't actually duplicate the RAW file - GENIUS!

However, when you click to send the image to Photoshop, it does now create a new file. Photoshop can't open RAW files so LR2 makes a copy of the RAW file in either tiff or PSD format (I suggest changing the format to PSD in the preferences section on the Edit menu in LR2 - PSD files are smaller than tiffs and handle colour better, they are 16bit and so give full professional results). It is this PSD or TIFF that opens in Photoshop.

In LR2 you will see this PSD appear in the filmstrip beside the original RAW. Make sure you check the 'open with Lightroom Adjustments' option when you open the file from Lightroom. This will apply the changes you have made in Lightroom to the RAW file and show them in the PSD image.

I always keep the RAW file, even when I have created a PSD from it. I view the RAW file as my digital negative. I can go back to it whenever I want in future and undo changes, create new versions (maybe in black and white or a different crop).

The PSD becomes my main file now. Once I have made all the adjustments to it I want, I save it. These changes will be displayed in Lightroom.

If I then want to upload a jpeg of the image to Flickr, I convert it to 8 bit at 72 ppi and resize it etc and save it as a jpeg on my desktop, (USING THE FILE, SAVE AS OPTION - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE THE ORIGINAL PSD REMAINS AS IT IS) do the upload to Flickr and then I can delete this image from my desktop. I don't need it.

I then reopen the PSD and make a copy as a jpeg to upload to my personal website as this requires different settings to the Flickr version. Once uploaded, I delete the jpeg again from the desktop - it is not required any more.

And so on. If it is an image for a client, I open the master PSD, make the changes needed - perhaps change it to a large Jpeg to be uploaded to my printer company - again, as always, using the file, save as, option. Once uploaded I can delete this jpeg.

By working in this way I don't create hundreds of copies of an image. I have the original RAW, my digital negative, and one full quality PSD file which is my working copy and that is all I need.

Next time I will talk about my backing up routine. (I know one of my students will be cringing at this - he thinks I go way over the top about backing up).

As always, if my explanations are unclear, please get in touch and I will try and help