What is your workflow for editing photos? (+small Lightroom rant as a bonus)

[MXM]

After some struggling with the Lightroom (1.1) I thought it would be nice to hear how other people deal with things.

So far I used exclusively Photoshop in editing photos and getting them ready for the web. My usual workflow in editing a large bunch of photos, from events for example, was something like this:

1. Copy all files into a subfolder, so originals will be left untouched.
2. With some photo browser or even just using thumbnails in win explorer look through the photos and delete ones that I don't want to use.
3. Open a photo in Photoshop, crop and rotate if needed.
4. Do whatever else needs to be done, usually just adjusting a bit of levels, curves, hue, etc.
5. Resize to needed width.
6. Unsharp mask with settings depending on the amount of detail on the photo (on average something around: amount - 150, radius - 0.3, threshhold - 3).
7. Ctrl - S.
8. Goto 3.

Steps 4-6 can be scripted, but at some photos different adjustments are needed. This is still a shitload of work if you have to repeat it 100 times at least.

Now I decided to give Lightroom a try, hoping it will reduce the amount of clicking. It does steps 1-4 brilliantly, I love the features for comparing photos, very nice cropping tool and all the color correction options you may need. It's kinda slow for my taste, but maybe with PC upgrade it'll do fine I dislike the keyboard shortcuts, or rather inability to remap them, and constant "loading" icon (again, something to be fixed with a better pc)

HOWEVER (and here comes the rant), I can't believe they didn't include proper sharpening tools. It makes whole application pointless. It has some sharpening settings, but those are for compensating for camera blur, and not for output sharpening. You can't resize the photos before you do exporting, and there're no sharpening settings in the export dialog. Even if there were proper output sharpening settings, how am I supposed to evaluate the amount needed before resizing is done?

So after doing color cropping and color corrections in lightroom, I still need to export all the photos, open them individually in photoshop, resize and apply proper sharpening. I could've done everything else in photoshop then as well... Amount of work is not reduced at all.

Now share your experience, I'm sure many of you do event photography and has to deal with big number of pictures regularly, how do you do it?

 

[Jay]

My procedure is pretty funny, because it is the same over and over. but it works!

1)make a new folder in my pictures folder.
2)plug in camera, right click photo and select "edit with photoshop"
3)go to image > adjustments > hue and saturation and reduce saturation by 20-40.
4)go to image > canvas size and make a canvas 40 X 40 "points"
5)go filters > distort > lens correction and load up on vignetting. (thank you AGAIN Peter for that tool!)
6)select waterwark and apply to photo. Make the opacity from 11-20%.
7)select "save for web" and save ass 800 X 546. Then save in the new folder.
8)if it is a PAD, I just put it the main directory of the drive.

That's it.

 

[pdanev]

Jay, why do you increase canvas size, and also, why do you save for web? Doesn't save for web use a worse jpg compression, why not save as -> jpg -> highest quality?

As for the workflow, its about the same here. Open picture, duplicate original layer in case there is some content I want to remove/smudge/clone etc. Then add adjustment layers, levels/curves/selective colors etc, or instead of levels/curves use shadow/highlights. Depending on picture, maybe add a photo filter layer for a warmer or colder effect, or maybe sepia. Sometimes make a b&w on top, and change blending mode or reduce opacity for the desaturated color look. Also optional is adding a vignette. Crop, resize, and save as in a different folder usually. I also keep originals and edited in separate folders.

Of course it varies depending on pictures, but this is the usual quick procedure for me.

 

[MXM]

I didn't actually mean what exactly do you adjust and filters do you apply, but rather how do you deal with big amount of photos?

Because as I said, photoshop is great but incredibly time consuming, and lightroom is fast and easy but really lacks the needed functions.

 

[pdanev]

In that respect I'm selective.

Big amount of photos -> narrow it down to 30-40, and edit them every now and then, few photos at a time.

Else, record an action for adjusting levels/curves, resizing, saving as and run it across all photos.

 

[hansvonaxion]

In that respect I'm selective.

Big amount of photos -> narrow it down to 30-40, and edit them every now and then, few photos at a time.

Else, record an action for adjusting levels/curves, resizing, saving as and run it across all photos.

Yeah, editing is the key. If the pics are for a client, I will use an action to create some JPEG previews and get them to choose their faves, then go back and edit those.

But shooting in RAW (+JPEG) means I dont need to duplicate.
Copy to desktop,
(Use JPEGS for previews)
Browse in bridge,
Open in PS and edit,
save as TIFF in new folder,
Use actions to do anything accross the board, like resize, make previews for web, change colour space etc after all have been edited.

Does that make sense?

Edit; before CS3 I used the RAW plugin to convert all RAW>TIFF, then edited in PS and used actions for batch processing.