Digital Workflow

Digital workflow describes what a digital photographer DOES with his or her work after taking the shots.

With a film camera, you develop the slides, label them, and then archive them. Maybe make some prints, scan them, etc.

But digital workflow is much more complicated:

What format do you shoot in?

How do you most effectively back up your photos?

What is an "optimal" computer and storage media setup for storing archives and assets?

How do you archive, sort, and search your photos to find what you need?

How do you transmit photos to clients and others for web and/or press use?

How do you prepare your photos for print? How do you prepare them for web display?

Everything has a different way of doing things and there surely is no "best" way. What is YOUR best way?

Cheers

James Wiseman

Hi James,

I am Back! :freak:

I won't try to answer all your post, that a whole book! but I"ll start it out anyway.

This is my typical method for basic flow:

1: I always shoot in Raw mode. On Land with my 1d I shoot in Raw plus Jpeg.

2: I dump the drive to a temporary folder on my computer and preview to cull out the obvious losers. (usually about 90%)

3: My computer has two hard drives and a very fast Plexor 48/24/48 burner. (Which I highly reccomend) I will copy the folder on my hard drive to my secondary drive with all the files still in the raw format.

4: Than I convert and edit the images I am interested in. I usually correct then and save them as the biggest tiff files I can. (theory being its a lot easier to resize to web size.)

5: Finished images are saved by trip or subject into folders on the second hard drive.

6: I than burn two cds, one of finished images and one of raw. So I end up with a two sets of finished images one on cdroms and the second on a hard dirve.

As I have gotten older this works well, as I tend to trash most of my shots anyway. I have quit trying to make a so so shot decent, unless it has special memories. Sometiemes leads to disappointing trips, but it sure saves a ton of space and work.

I think chapters could be written on this supject.... but I will be interested to hear what others do. Especially on printing. that to me is extremely frustrating to get consistant results.

My "digital workflow"

I press the shutter release, picture is stored on the card/drive. I hook it up to my computer and download. I play with my screw-ups. If I like it after I print it on my printer.

Sorry, just my late Friday afternoon humour. Accountant trying to be funny, loosen up people.

... and I thought I was going to learn something new!

I have the luxury of a mainframe for multitasking and auto sequencing of files etc. My cousin wrote the software for me some years ago. It has a search system to locate files or batches depending on the instruction, and an intelligent file allocation protocol. This system saves each image file into three types - Max TIFF (20mb - 600 dpi A3), Demo Disk (1 mb 150 dpi A4) and a practical email (>50 kb 72 dpi 600x400).

Onsite: Both canons are using 1 Gb MD's. I have got two extra 20 Gb HD's for my modular laptop which can do the initial business of storage without bothering the main HD.

Back at home I just plug these into the modular adaption on the main terminal and do the editing & sorting business. All files worth keeping are stored in system of 8 hard drives in a 4 + 4 layout of 8 partition 40 Gb HD's.

Images are selected for article support or agencies by requesting area, specie etc. These are selected from the data base automatically and displayed in thumbnail size. I then select whatever to be written to CD or DVD ROM depending on bulk.

Printing: I only print off by request, rarely for myself except when working on a layout/design project.

I print from slide directly onto Cibachrome or Fujichrome paper.

Having digitised over 14,000 slide files already the only thing I have been missing until now is a digital UW camera setup, which will reduce time by cutting out the slide scanning operation.

Obviously this time will be lost again buggering about with the digital image to bring it up to a similar standard.

Until digital can satisfy me that it can cope with SWA shots incorporating direct sunlight with clean graduations through white to blues and blacks I do not invisage the Dynax 9's being made redundant for some time to come.

Other than that I am pretty RAW!

BobJ,

Welcome back! I hope your hand is doing well.

Todd, Tip back a cold one for me!

BowW,

Whoa! If you have scanned over 14,000 slides, you are going to LOVE your digital setup!!!!!

I'll post my digital workflow after I get home. It's going to be pretty in-depth. With all of these "RAW-shooting" cameras popping up, someone needs to do it.

Cheers

James

I'm in the process of recovering from carpal tunnel surgery. A word of advice, if your hand hurts get good medical advice. Don't let it go like I did.