Digital Trinidad

If you've ever witnessed the comedic frustration involved when those guys over at Trinidad Dreamscape have to find a film scan, you will know the value of a having a workflow. Having your files scattered all over the place on CDs, DVDs, and multiple hard drives with weird directory names is not an option with thousands of digital files. A workflow is basically the procedure a photographer follows starting with recording the image, and ending with an image output, either as a print or as a web picture. Everybody has a different workflow, however, it is important to have a repeatable, and consistent workflow for every image downloaded from the camera or you will run the risk of losing pictures.

The most important aspects of having a workflow are that you can find specific images easily, you can edit hundreds of pictures rapidly, and that your pictures are backed up. Although new digital users download their memory card data to just about anywhere, what quickly starts to become apparent when scores of pictures become hundreds, and then hundreds grow into thousands is how on earth do you find that picture of Aunt Mae you took 2 years ago? "Oh no", you say after slogging through your twentieth directory of 1000 images each, "did I erase the directory with her picture by accident six months ago?" So much for Aunt Mae's picture. Below, I elaborate briefly on a general type of workflow that can be adapted to meet specific needs.

Shoot RAW.

For the life of me, I fail to fathom why people go out and buy expensive DSLRs, and then shoot jpeg files with them. That's like buying a fast speedboat and then when it's time to move you pull out the oars and start rowing. If you thought that RAW processing is really slow it's time you looked at the current generation of RAW processors which are much faster than their predecessors. The RAW file is your digital negative, and is not a lossy compression format like jpeg. Every time you adjust and save a jpeg it causes data loss. Also, jpegs force you to make decisions regarding white balance at the scene, whereas white balance adjustment can be done at your leisure with a RAW file.

Getting images into the computer, metadata, backing up

Don't delete pictures from your memory card while it is in your camera. I have heard that it is generally not a good idea, as card crashes have been known to occur this way. Download everything into the computer and edit there.

Even if you have just acquired your digital camera you should decide now on a piece of software that will keep track of all of your images. There are lots out there, from free tools and browsers to extremely expensive professional tools. Many professionals use iMedia View Pro, or Bibble, or Adobe Bridge that is paired with Photoshop, or the free software browsers which come with the camera. The packages vary mainly in their complexity, and personality, and there are no stand-out duds. Choose one and stick with it.

Metadata consists of text information that is appended to every image that comes out of your camera. It will contain information about your camera type, camera settings, file name etc. You can add information to the metadata file to help you find that image in the future via a metadata search. It is usually best to append as much metadata information to images DURING an import and not after - not a necessity, but it cuts down on the work later on. For example, suppose the images on your memory card are from Aunt Mae's 75th wedding anniversary. As soon as you place your card in your card reader your cataloguing software will automatically activate. It will ask if you want to import the images into your library. Hold on just a second, though, as there is an option to append metadata automatically to all the incoming pictures. Select this option. In the fields you can type in your copyright information. Also type in the event (Aunt Mae's anniversary) description in the 'caption' box. You can also add relevant keywords to the images like 'wedding anniversary', or the place where the event took place, or any other applicable information. You can also rename all the images to meet your needs. For example, '26378_CR.RAW' is a typical camera image file name, which is not very helpful. You can change this to 2007-08-01-Rebel-#, where '2007-08-01' is the date, 'Rebel' is the camera used, and '#' will act as a counter for the images. Or even more intuitively, 'aunt_mae_anniversary-#'. Now you can import the images. What will then happen is that all this extra metadata will be added to each file. When you want to find pictures from Aunt Mae's wedding anniversary 2 years from now, just punch the keyword/s into your catalogue software and the relevant images will be immediately presented in your browser gallery. Even if you don't have cataloguing software, you can still get an idea about what an image might contain by looking at it's filename in your computer directory. For example, 'aunt_mae_anniversary-#' is a lot better than '26378_CR.RAW'!

You can also add metadata to specific pictures after an import. For example, all the pictures of your little niece at the event can be labelled with her name for retrieval later. There is no getting around that adding metadata ain't fun, but it is a life-saver in the long run.

We're not done importing yet! I am assuming that you are a good girl / boy and you have an extra external hard drive connected to your computer via Firewire, or USB. If you've been bad, stop reading now, go to your nearest retailer, online or otherwise, and BUY ONE, or two. On this drive you should have created a backup library of all your pictures (the cataloguing software sets this up for you automatically at a mouse-click). Now, as soon as you have imported your new Aunt Mae pictures, instruct your cataloguing software to backup all the new images to your backup library on the external drive. When this is done, check to make sure the images look okay by clicking on a few. Only now should you remove your memory card from the card reader. Place the card into the camera, and format it. Never, ever delete pictures from, or format, your memory card until you are certain all the images on the card are safe and sound in 2 separate locations.

First-pass editing, rating, and choosing selects

Right. So we've imported 300 odd pictures from Aunt Mae's anniversary, added metadata to most, and backed them up. Most workflow software packages allow the user to see a gallery of small thumbnails as well as a larger picture of any mouse-selected thumbnail. Most packages also allow you to rate images with stars etc., or reject them to the 'rejects' album. Note that rejects are not erased, just stored out of the way for review later. You can ultimately decide to delete or not at a later time. Now, quickly scan through your pictures by clicking on each one, if necessary. You can make your thumbnails bigger to see more detail, and forego the big picture entirely for first-pass editing. All the out-of-focus, and blurred shots, for example, you will select 'reject', and they will disappear. All the technically okay shots but which still look just awful (bad framing etc.) are rated as 1 star. Decent shots get 2 or 3 stars. Great shots get 4 stars. You can now ask your cataloguing programme to display only 4 star pictures. You've now ended up with 20 or so pictures. You can also display your 2 or 3 star pictures at full screen now to decide if to promote or demote them. After a couple passes, you have your 15 or so 'selects', and 25 or 30 'maybes' out of a total of 300 pictures. The 15 selects will now proceed to your RAW editor for fine editing / tweaking.

Editing selects in your RAW converter

Ick. That bad word 'RAW' again. To process RAW files you need a RAW converter. Think of it as a specific developer like in the days of film. Each RAW converter interprets your RAW files slightly differently, but you can fix that to suit your tastes. Remember, you're in charge with RAW. This is in contradistinction to jpeg files. Your camera makes adjustments to jpeg files such as sharpening, contrast, colour saturation, that you only have limited control over via camera presets. Most users don't even know that their cameras are doing this. Once these adjustments are made, they are difficult to reverse in post-processing if you don't like it, especially with respect to sharpening. The most important aspect to remember with RAW processing is that you can adjust any parameter in your picture, but NO CHANGES ARE EVER MADE TO YOUR ORIGINAL RAW FILE. You can change Aunt Mae's hair to green comfortable in the knowledge that you can go back to the original picture at any time. You can also save multiple versions of the same picture.

Most software cataloguers have RAW converters built-in, so you alter colours and do other editing tasks in the same programme. Some professional photographers use stand-alone RAW processors that they export their images to. There are a myriad of adjustments that are available, and these are beyond the scope of this article.

Finishing touches, and output.

Although RAW converters offer many ways to tweak your image there is sometimes the need to do further processing in an image-editor like Photoshop. All RAW editors offer the facility to covert your image to a TIFF file for export to Photoshop, or another image editor. You can either print or publish to the web directly from the RAW editor, or through Photoshop. Web images should be tagged with an sRGB colour profile to facilitate browsers that are standards compliant. It is also helpful to colour calibrate your monitor using a proprietary colorimeter. To print, adjust picture resolution to 300ppi, adjust picture size, and hit print.

Well, that's it in basic. I hope this helps a bit!

- June 2007.