digital workflow: image processing

Last week we selected files from a shoot for processing…

Now that our RAW files have been selected for processing in Phase One’s Capture One software, we will output these “selecteds” as high-resolution TIFF files. At this stage of the game we we want to create the best possible uncompressed TIFF files that we can. Here are the basic settings that our studio uses:

1. We output the file at the original capture size without resizing up or down at this point. While I’m a big fan of Capture One, I’m not crazy about the interpolation of files (resizing) within this particular software. Other processing engines seem to do a better job at this. If you use different softwares for resizing, I strongly suggest you test each of them head-to-head to see how they do. I’ve used a few commercial programs for upsizing and, for what we do, Photoshop seems to do the best job for anything up to 200%.
2. 300 dpi – most of our work ends up in commercial print (ink on paper) and this is the standard. If most of your work is for inkjet printing you may choose 240 dpi or have another preference. We make sure all of our cameras and softwares are set to output at 300 dpi by default.
3. Adobe RGB color space – Adobe RGB is the industry standard recognized by UPDIG and it translates well to CMYK later for commercial printing or sRGB for web or C-prints. Adobe RGB contains much more color information than sRGB or CMYK, so we want to have all of that information available while the file is in the working stages. It’s smart to start out as Adobe RGB and, if you’re going to convert to a smaller color space (sRGB or CMYK) at some point, do that “color information downsizing” just before finalizing the file for delivery. There are other color spaces trying to get people’s attention but, for now, it seems that Adobe RGB is the standard for “working” purposes.
4. We output in 8 bit color…most of the time. After talking quite a bit about wanting as much file information as possible, here we’re opting for a choice with less color information (8 bit vs. 16 bit). For most of our purposes 8 bit is fine and having the additional color information of 16 bit photos creates huge files that slow down computers and require much more storage space. While the industry (and we) are moving more toward working in 16 bit color, our studio isn’t fully there yet, to be honest. When we have subtle gradations in a photo, though, the 8 bit file might not provide enough subtle information and banding (blotchiness) can occur where tones smoothly “roll” into one another. If we shoot on white with a gentle gray gradient, for example, we process the image to 16 bit right off the bat so there is more color information and gradations are smoother. It’s all about finding a balance between quality, file size, processing time and storage. 8 bit is fine for most everything we do and it keeps our workflow manageable.

Now here’s a kicker: in next week’s installment we’re going to convert these carefully rendered TIFF files to Photoshop documents (psd) to use them as “working” files. Observant readers will note that they can convert directly from RAW to psd in ACR / Bridge / Photoshop and Lightroom, bypassing this entire stage of TIFF output I’ve just described.

So why do we do this step and not just put the RAW files into an Adobe product? If it’s just one or two files we’re talking about, we might do that. But because we shoot our jobs directly into Capture One and it uses the custom color (icc) profiles we’ve made for our cameras, it keeps us within our color-managed workflow from capture to output (camera, monitor and printer all profiled). When we use the Adobe products we aren’t able to use our custom camera profiles, we have to use the installed, default Adobe camera profiles. For critical color applications we benefit from using Capture One.

If you’re using Canon DPP or Nikon Capture NX to work on files, you may also (like us) be adjusting them within that software and processing to TIFF before transferring the files to Photoshop. Personally, I’m really comfortable with having the TIFF file since it’s what I’m used to and it provides another universally recognized format of file as backup.

Now these processed, selected TIFF files can go into the Selected folder on the desktop. This is the point where we add metadata and keywords, to the TIFF files. We have templates set up with our copyright and contact information and this is applied to the files in a batch. Bob likes to do this in Adobe Bridge, I do this after pulling everything into yet another program, my favorite for cataloging: iView Media Digital Asset Management Software (recently bought out and being changed over to Microsoft Expressions). The great thing about iView Media Pro / Expression is that it automatically reads down into subfolders and can read from multiple folders in the same catalog. It will recognize most any media file you can imagine. No matter what you want to catalog (photos or movies), this software will recognize it and deal with it just fine. It’s very powerful. It also allows for the creation of contact sheets and quality web galleries.

We’ll get to this at the end of the series, but iView Media / Expressions is the software we depend on to catalog our many tens of thousands of images shot through the years. It also creates catalog files that can be easily distributed to our clients.

That’s a lot to chew on. Next week we take these Selected files and make them into Working files.