http://www.the-digital-picture.com/P...-Workflow.aspx

 

There are some good tips and not-so-good tips in there. I don't know why he's so big into deleting things? Storage is cheap, keep everything.

Really, there's no such thing as a perfect workflow. All you can do is create a workflow that works for you.

In my case, this is what I do:

In the field
-Shoot RAW (just plain old RAW, not RAW+JPG)
-Back up regularly to my portable HD
-On longer trips, make a backup of the cards nightly to my laptop

At home
-Copy the files to my photos folder, which is organized in a \Photos\yyyy\"Event" format.
-All RAW files get dumped into the newly created event folder. If there were multiple days or locations on the trip, I'll create appropriate subfolders and place the raw files there.

Processing
-Calibrate your monitor often. Editing your photos on a non-calibrated monitor is an exercise in futility. Once your monitor is profiled, you can begin your work.
-I use Adobe Camera RAW for most of my conversions, but if I want to use Picture Styles I'll use Digital Camera Professional.
-If I am shooting a motorsports event, I'll have to do some sorting of the images to cull the pans that didn't work out. I shot 5.5GB and 719 photos when the ALMS was at Mosport this year, so I need to cull a lot of bad pans and otherwise uninteresting shots. These shots just get binned into a "reject" folder, but I don't throw them out, because there have been times when I needed to get something from one of those shots.
-Of the remaining good shots, I will do most of my processing in the RAW converter. When I have the file close to how I want it, I'll bring it into Photoshop as a 16-bit file in the PhotoPRO colorspace.
-There are several steps I perform on photos, such as sharpening and curves, so I have created actions for those steps. These actions save a lot of time when processing a day's worth of images.
-If the image has several layers, I will save it as a PSD file. Otherwise, I will convert it to the sRGB colorspace and save it as a JPG (Level 12). The saved JPGs are stored in a folder called "Processed" inside the event folder.

Backup
-You can never have your photos stored in enough places.
-My photos are stored on my desktop, external HD, DVD, and on Flickr. Some might also be on my laptop, but not a full set due to space constraints.
-I have a set of DVD's stored off-site just in case.


The processing step is pretty vague because it varies greatly from event to event and from photo to photo. There's no best way to edit a photo, just like there's no best way to cook food. If you're looking for tips on a specific photo, I can certainly elaborate on some workflow suggestions then.

 

 

Only for the really "special" photos.

 

I've actually reduced the amount of processing I'm doing in the raw converter (Adobe Camera Raw). I do a rough crop if necessary, and tweak the white balance and overall exposure. That's it in the converter. The remaining corrections and enhancements are done with adjustment layers and/or layer copies in Photoshop.

Overall, I've come to like the methodology that Rob Sheppard uses. He's the editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine. I can't truthfully say I put his workflow idea to best practice all the time but it's a framework that I'm comfortable with and gives me some direction on what I'm doing with an image. An outline view of the workflow can be found in the magazine column I linked below. Rob's book is one of the best Photoshop books I own and is basically 300+ pages of illustrated and detailed examples of his workflow.

Column: http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/c...workflow.shtml

Book: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyT...471786195.html