Image Format for Commercial Use

1. Anything that reduces the time and effort of getting an image into whatever the final format I am looking for is critical. By the nature of digital I take so many more shots that I did with film, so it is vitally important to be able to do this. Screwing about with finding the 'right' color is not my idea of fun.

This is probably a subject for a whole other thread but I'll bring it up anyway.

How are you shooting and storing your images for your commercial stock business? Are you shooting in raw and converting to TIFF or JPEG? Or, are you shooting JPEG right out of the camera. What format are your clients looking for?

Hi Linda,

This really depends on how much time pressure you are under.

As a general rule, I say shoot RAW format whenever you can. If you are under a time crunch, then do a batch conversion using the "camera defaults." Basically that would give you the same output that you would have gotten if you'd been shooting JPEG. However, you still have the "digital negatives" aka the RAF files. That will add about 20% time onto your workflow.

If you are REALLY crunched for time (like making a CD for passengers ON the diveboat) then I sometimes shoot JPEG. My laptop has a crappy uncalibrated monitor, so I wouldn't trust myself to do any color correction out there anyhow.

For everything else, it's RAW and then convert the images at home on my PC and 19" trinitron. 16-Bit 12 megapixel TIFF's from the S2 can go straight from the RAW converter to Photoshop and only need sharpening and/or cropping and they are finished. I usually get all of my color correction done in the RAW converter.

Cheers

James

Hi Linda,

Last time I checked my name was Larry. That's OK James, I've been called a lot worse

Hi Larry,

I looked back through your posts, and I didn't see anywhere where you signed your name.

So I was trying to do the word association game - but I got it wrong.

Nice to meet you though - I didn't think you were a fish...:-)

Cheers

James

This is probably a subject for a whole other thread but I'll bring it up anyway.

 

How are you shooting and storing your images for your commercial stock business? Are you shooting in raw and converting to TIFF or JPEG? Or, are you shooting JPEG right out of the camera. What format are your clients looking for?

Shooting RAW.

I have a 2GB compact flash card (160 shots per cardin RAW) and a couple of 1GB microdrives (80 shots per card) which is normally plenty.

From RAW I can turn it into whatever the client wants. Clients want either TIFF or JPG depending on their needs - although JPG is becoming more and more popular for smaller print sizes. In my workflow converting to the clients requested format is the last step.

Almost all online previews are done in JPG just for size and speed.

M