Shooting raw and then what?

[Trey Barron]

I am fairly new to this and was wondering what most do after working on the RAW file. Is it saved to a tiff for later work and what should be done in RAW vs another format. I am also wondering if there are any resources that may help with my workflow including organization (I am a poor college student) whether it be books or online articles. I would appreciate any input on this. Really love the new forum.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Trey

If you shoot in RAW you should keep your RAW file along any conversion

The new trend is for programs like Lightroom and Aperture They actually do not change the RAW file Just keep track of changes you have made At any time you can hit reset and the original (unmodified comes up) Convenient

In Both you can catalog images so the program becomes an al in one I think the price for LR is $199 so it is not cheap but it does a lot The only other program you would need is PhotoShop

Forgot ...... for specific simple work flow I would get Artie's digital basics Comes in CD and can't beat it !!!! Available at the store !!!

[Jason Vaclavek]

Hi Trey,
After adjusting and then converting my RAW files, I save the converted file as a .PSD . I don't make it a point to keep the RAW files once converted. You should back up your image files and then back up the back ups and maybe even once again and then one more time, just to be safe.
As far as books go, PhotoShop for Nature Photographers by Ellen Anon & Tim Grey is a must have!! And then countless hours and sleepless nights spent reading the forums and articles on websites such as this one, BPN, is a great resource of knowledge!

[David Hunter]

Trey,

As a student you should be able to get some killer deals on software like Lightroom, Photoshop through online sellers. I have used one called Academic Superstore online before and the prices are great. Since I'm an teacher I've saved up to $300 before. But the deals are for anyone in academia, students included. Your college/university might also have some deals through its campus technology store. John Shaw also has an eBook CD out teaching you how to do the digital workflow. It is available at his webiste.

P.S. I just checked. Academic Supersotore is offering lightroom for $98.00. (It is the normal version, just discoounted for education use)

[Gyorgy Szimuly]

While I can achieve reasonable results of digital workflow I cannot say I know everything about it. As I continuously learn something new on processing RAW files I definitely don't delete any keeper RAW files. Your process technic is going to change dramatically when you start posting your images here or any other similar forum. The guys here will direct you with the right settings in either Aperture or Ligthroom or PS.
Szimi

[Fabs Forns]

Hi Trey,
After adjusting and then converting my RAW files, I save the converted file as a .PSD . I don't make it a point to keep the RAW files once converted. You should back up your image files and then back up the back ups and maybe even once again and then one more time, just to be safe.
As far as books go, PhotoShop for Nature Photographers by Ellen Anon & Tim Grey is a must have!! And then countless hours and sleepless nights spent reading the forums and articles on websites such as this one, BPN, is a great resource of knowledge!

Jason, I think it would be worth for you to keep your RAWs.

First, as Szimi mentions, your abilities improve with time and two years from now, you'd be surprised at how much you could improver your conversion.

Second, with technology advances, all converting software will sure improve over time.

RAWs are smaller than PSD, so you'll even be saving space ;)

[Trey Barron]

Thanks for all your input. I have learned a ton of info from you guys in the last week or so. I have allready ordered (this morning) The Art of Bird Photography CD and am hoping that is a good start. I have a hard enough time deleting some of my not so good images much less deleting the Raw files of better images.

David, I appreciate the website. I might be able to swing LR at that price. Then I will have to upgrade from PSCS to CS3!

[JH Tugs]

Also don't forget that Educational Discounts for most companies are available to you if you have children in school (Kindergarten upwards), or are state registered home-schoolers. Lightroom for $99 as mentioned above, and also great deals on the CS3 components and bundles.

For me, such as it is, I shoot RAW, import directly into Lightroom (though I really must buy a bigger USB drive so I can get lightroom to auto-backup the files to the USB drive while it imports from the compact flash card), then everything stays in RAW.

I try to be disciplined and use LR's renaming feature to add a sensible prefix before the image number (e.g. "BrasstownBald20071225-xxxx" rather than the camera's default "_MG_xxxx". I try to add high level keywords and templated (C) and other meta info at the import stage as well. I figure chances are I'll not go back and do it otherwise. I'll then add more specific keywords as I work on files worthy of keeping.

On my first pass through the uploaded images I am fairly brutal about deleting images that are not up to scratch. e.g. if the focus is totally out and there's nothing obviously salvagable, why keep the shot? It just wastes HD space.

After that I start working through the files and selecting ones I think are actually worthy of further processing, and I tag them or rate them so at the end of the pass through the photos I can filter by the tag/rating, and quickly narrow down to the ones I need to work on.

Then I go through the ones I've decided are worth working on, and process them - always on 'virtual copies' of the original so I can see where I started from and see if I actually made the right decisions when I processed (it's so easy to get carried away and lose the thing that made you like the photograph in the first place). I'll sometimes make multiple virtual copies to either experiment with different ways of processing the file, or for different crops, saturations, etc. By having a virtual copy for each file that I end up exporting to JPG (etc), I can always go back and tweak the settings on that particular export if required without having to remember how I got there... If I need to work on an image in PS, I open it from within Lightroom so that the resulting PSD file gets stacked with the original image. I'm a big fan of Smart Objects and Adjustment Layers in PS, again so that I don't have to guess what settings I used, as I can re-open the filter/adjustment and see them!

If I need a JPEG for the web, I export from Lightroom directly, setting whatever options I need at that time.

I maintain my library spread across two storage devices currently - anything in the last month is likely on my laptop, and anything older I migrate to my NAS (Network Attached Storage) device which is running RAID5. If you make the file move within Lightroom, it will automatically update your database with the new location as it moves the files. What this means is that I maintain a single index in LR of all my files, but I only have to keep the ones I'm working on on my actual laptop (for speed purposes - opening loads of files over wireless gets tedious real quick).

If I have to send a 'raw' style file to somebody, I export in DNG format so I can retain the meta data (keywords, copyright, shooting data, settings, etc) - otherwise you could send RAW and export the XMP sidecar (a partner file that contains all that meta info you've added to your file).

No idea if this is an ideal workflow, but it works for me at the moment.

j.