digital workflow: image selection
Digital Workflow, Stage 2: image selection
Last week we looked at archiving RAW files from a shoot. There’s an important point I failed to mention that should be throw in. When I initially back up my RAW files only the blank frames or total disasters get discarded. At this initial stage I don’t like to “chimp” much to make space on a card, or toss out files too liberally. For some photographers that works just fine but not in our particular studio environment.
As a commercial studio we resist throwing away images from the early staging of a shot or images not exposed correctly. What we’ve found is that even though the entire photo may not be desirable, it may contain an element we need later. For example, a poorly exposed image may contain opened eyes or a smile on a person that can be cloned into another image. These things don’t happen often but when the client says, “hmmm, do you have one where…”, then the odds are increased if we keep the marginal ones. So, in the beginning, we rarely throw anything away before the initial archive onto CD / DVD. Who knows, even a casual snapshot may have historical value that isn’t evident at the time.
Now it’s time to move on to selecting the files we like. My personal workflow was developed a few years ago and, as such, I’m pretty entrenched with a certain software set. There are newer “all in one” solutions available (like Lightroom and Aperture) that may ultimately prove to be a better alternative to the multiple software solution. I’ve downloaded a free trial of Lightroom and am learning my way around the software as this is being written (Free Trial Downloads from Adobe). If you’re currently using Lightroom or Aperture I would really like to hear your impressions of the software packages.
The majority of our jobs are shot tethered to a computer using Phase One’s Capture One software. Shooting tethered is also possible with a number of other softwares: Nikon Capture, Canon DPP, BreezeBrowser (are there others?).
I will say that I’m very happy with the processed images coming from Capture One. The latest LE version has just been released, Capture One 4, and it allows for quality file management and conversion. We use the more expensive professional version, Capture One Pro V3.7 PC/Mac Software
, that allows tethered shooting. This software accepts the custom icc profiles we create for each of our camera models and that is a bonus in the studio atmosphere. We’re not limited to preset profiles provided by the software. Using a color-managed workflow gives us greater control over color from start to finish.
The majority of photographers shoot to a card and then offload images to a hard drive. Since we’re shooting directly into Capture One, we make our selections within this software as we go by tagging images for processing. You may be doing this selection process in some other software (Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, etc.).
Capture One is simple, there are “tag” and “untag” functions. Personally, I’ve never gotten into different ratings using stars, etc., at this point in the selection process, this is just for initial keepers. These selected files will be processed out as TIFF files from Capture One and saved in the “Selected” folder created on our desktop. This way we have a high-resolution TIFF file of our initial favorites to work from (and, as a result, another generation of backup for preservation).
There are a number of criteria we use in selecting images as “keepers” and the software facilitates this. We can quickly check the following elements in the Capture One browser. Many other softwares allow this kind of scrutiny, also:
• View image histogram (which is also done during the shoot) to insure we’re choosing the best exposure from a series.
• Use the visual exposure warnings built into the software. Our software is set to flash warnings if a file’s highlights register over 245 (they turn red) and shadows drop below 8 (they turn green). Those parameters may be changed within the software.
• View image at 100%. We don’t like to view the image at less than 100% in order to judge sharpness. Though camera LCD screens have improved greatly I still don’t care to make critical judgements on the camera back, I feel it’s better to wait and do this on the computer screen.
Now that we’ve selected our RAW files we use the software to make them as color, exposure and white balance perfect as possible before processing out to TIFF. We’re now creating an original image and don’t want to just knock something out and “fix it in Photoshop”. The reasons for not overly manipulating a non-RAW file were discussed in an earlier post, RAW vs. JPEG.
That’s it for this week’s workflow, we’ll be back at it next Tuesday with our standards for processing TIFF files: color space, 8- or 16-bit, choosing ppi, and more.
Aperture also allows tethered shooting for many cameras, with easy rating (although by stars), keywording, etc. I believe you can use custom profiles, however I haven’t tried it.
I use Aperture and love it. I’ve shot tethered with it for small setups, but I am a card-to-harddrive kind of girl. Aperture allowed me to comb through the 4000 pictures I took on Sunday and narrow them down, keyword, rate and organize them down to less than 200 in about 3 hours, with some image tweaking along the way, to have them online today for my (potential) clients. I can’t tell you how long this used to take using the native Nikon software.
I love hearing other people’s workflows, and seeing where I could trim some fat off of a process. Thanks, Jim, keep it coming!
Interesting article again. I generally use Nikon View NX to sort through my RAWs and Capture NX to correct and process them out to JPEGs. I’ll use Photoshop Elements for things that Capture NX can’t do, but I’m really still learning how Elements works.
I tried the Lightroom 2 beta and was impressed with it. It has the full Adode Camera RAW interface that Elements lacks. Plus, the new localized edit capabilities were great. I might look into getting Lightroom when version 2 releases.
I’ve been using Lightroom since it was released (I got a free upgrade, as a result of being a Raw Shooter Premium owner), and after the initial learning curve, it has simplified my processing immensely. With the upcoming localized editing in 2, I think it will be rare that I need to use Photoshop, depending on how soft-proofing works in 2.
I have not tried tethered shooting with LR, but I know it is possible.
I’m curious if (and at what point in processing) you add keyword tags to your images, and what kind of keyword structure you use.
Great info, and looking forward to the next installment!
I’ve been using Lightroom for more than a year now. It’s a great solution for managing a large image archive, and its features allow for an efficient but personalized workflow. I appreciate if a software gives me tools to work with, rather than force me down a particular path.
Depending on situation I either download cards into Lightroom or shoot tethered. When shooting tethered (Canon 1DSM3) the image is transferred via Canon’s software and dumped into a specific folder. Lightroom is configured to monitor that same folder and instantly imports the image and displays, where it is immediately available for review and possibly small tweaks.
Since Lightroom performs virtual edits, it’s easy to play with various changes or even create multiple virutal copies without ever touching the raw files. It’s also easy to apply some edits (e.g. white balance) to an entire set, greatly improving efficiency. I find that Lightrooms edit functions are powerful enough that I only end up taking about 10% of my final shots into Photoshop for more involved editing which is a big time saver.
I use a combination of pick flag and ratings to do a multi-pass narrowing down (more detail on my workflow here: http://photos.janklier.com/2008/05/photos-savannah-bar-photos.html).
In Lightroom I use Collections to group all images of a particular shoot, client submissions, my print/edit queues, my portfolio, my website presence, etc. I use keyword tagging to keep track of models, and specific techniques I used. Keywords and Collections can be arranged hierarchically which keeps things a lot more organized.
I’ve not used Lightroom in a workgroup setting, so I’m not sure how some of these functions work with multiple people working on the same asset archive.
Jan, thanks much for the great information, I really appreciate it. You have a great site, also, I’ll definitely be referring to it.
I want to try Lightroom tethered in the manner you’ve suggested. Our studio had a portrait operation for a while and we used Lightroom and it worked well. In that setting it was really just one person maintaining and working on the files, as you’ve described.
I think it’s time we looked at using it in our workgroup, as you’ve suggested, to see if multiple people are able to work on the same asset archive. If this is possible we might just switch over.
Probably the main reason we’re hanging on to Capture One is because we’re able to load our custom camera profiles into the program. I don’t believe that’s possible with Lightroom currently but I’ll have to check that, too, to make sure. I know that new features are being added all the time.
It seems pretty obvious that Lightroom has many benefits for a person that maintains all of their own files and archive. Do you have any experience with Aperture or any points of comparison? Just curious.
Jim,
As far as I understand, LR does not support custom camera profiles. However, there are camera calibration settings in the Develop module that you can tweak, and then save those tweaks as a preset. This is probably not as comprehensive as a custom profile in C1, but if you combine it with Thomas Fors’ calibration script, it works nicely–for the exact lighting condition you were calibrating for.
The ACR: http://fors.net/chromoholics/
Martin Evening discusses how to do this in his LR book (well written).
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