raw workflow

[last updated : Jan 2006]

 

This web article was published in the
April 2006 edition of Rangefinder magazine

... and also appears in shortened form in
the following book by Bill Hurter -
Wedding Photographer's Handbook.

My digital workflow is geared mainly around my work as a wedding photographer. As a freelance photographer, I shoot between 1 and 3 weddings most weekends, and I shoot between 800 - 1500 images at each wedding in the raw file format. I specifically shoot in the raw format for all the well-known advantages, including a fast workflow. So my digital workflow is aimed at getting the best possible image in a fair amount of time … for a huge amount of photographs.

Firstly, if you already have Photoshop CS2, then you don’t need anything more than Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw for your raw workflow.

If you want a comprehensive (and understandable) book on raw workflow :
Real World Camera Raw with CS2,
by Bruce Fraser.

There is much to be said for working entirely within Bridge and Camera Raw. However, I tend to mix & match various other programs in my workflow.

I shoot with both Canon and Nikon cameras, and my workflow is slightly different for each, in that I like using Canon’s proprietary software, DPP. It is an easy and fast program to use. Nikon’s software is more limited for a volume workflow, and there the other raw editor programs are far more efficient.

I use BreezeBrowser Pro for my initial workflow, and for the actual editing process, I usually work with Capture One Pro, which is an impressively fast tool for editing images in RAW.

This workflow will certainly change over time as software specific to raw workflow is developed. At the time of writing, things were heating up with the release of Aperture, and intended release of Adobe’s Lightroom.

As an aside, there is another option to spending hours editing images yourself before sending it off to the lab for proofs. You can handle your workflow similarly to how you did with film, and just ask your lab to correct your images for you. This will save you a ton of time.


Workflow stages

  1. image transfer – copy images from CF cards to hard disc.
  2. verifying raw files and rename – let Bridge or Capture One generate previews.
  3. creating back-ups to DVD and / or other hard discs.
  4. editing raw files – select, sort, add metadata, and correcting raw files.
  5. production – process to jpg for proofing / web galleries.


The workflow is a methodical system to make sure I always have back-ups and that I can retrace my steps at any point, in case I make mistakes or there are problems.

Firstly, the most important step for a good digital workflow is to make sure you have the best possible exposure, and the best possible white balance when taking the actual photograph. The closer the image is to ideal, the less work you have to do in post-production.

Keeping your exposures and white balance consistent for entire sequences of images, will greatly speed up your workflow, besides giving you optimum image quality. By shooting in manual exposure mode, all the photos in a sequence will be the same - so if there are any (slight) errors, I can adjust groups of images, instead of labouring over individual images. This will drastically cut down on the time I need to spend on them in post-processing.

Consistency is the key . I nearly always shoot in manual exposure mode for this reason - consistency. With flash, I vary between using TTL flash of some kind, or manual flash, depending on various factors.

With digital photography it is essential to get the exposure close to correct as possible in camera. If you over-expose, you have about a stop range in raw to pull back highlight detail. If you under-expose your photograph, especially when using a high iso, then you're going to end up with a lot of noise in the shadow areas.

Ultimately, a good digital workflow starts with getting the best image directly out of camera that we are capable of.


Please feel free to e-mail me.

Neil van Niekerk

further pages

raw workflow - intro page

workflow stages :



raw advantage

I shoot nearly exclusively in the raw file format, because of the numerous advantages the raw file format offers over simply shooting in jpg format.

Most importantly,
raw allows you to change settings afterwards,
such as White Balance, Sharpening, Levels and Curves, Tone Comp / Custom Tone Curve, and even Exposure Compensation.

The raw format is also
more forgiving of errors
in exposure and colour balance, than with jpg.

Correcting White Balance is a breeze in raw, unlike if I shot in jpg. Simply clicking on white point is often enough to bring your WB very close to where you want it.

Once you have a good raw workflow in place, it is so much faster and easier to correct multiple images in raw than it would be to do the same for jpgs.

Also, I have nearly 1 stop over-exposure latitude, unlike jpg where there is no latitude. You might be able to work some Photoshop magic make an over-exposed jpg look better, but you'd still be way behind someone who worked on the raw file of the same image. No contest.

Conversion to B&W
With some raw editing software, you can change a raw file to black-and-white (or even sepia) with a click or two. Or back to colour.
You can do this for multiple images. This is a far more efficient way of doing it than running Photoshop actions on jpgs.

Another advantage is that editing a raw file is
non-destructive. You can do multiple changes without affecting the quality adversely. With jpg there is inevitably degradation of the image. Whether it is noticeable is another long involved argument, but to my mind, raw is clearly superior here.

One more thing that appeals to me about the raw format, is that with jpgs you'd have to come up with a system where you keep multiple copies and multiple back-ups so that you don't change your original image.

However with raw,
you can always revert to your original settings,
with no degradation to the image, and without calling up the actual original image you stored somewhere.

(Obviously you do need a solid archiving / back-up system in place, whatever format you shoot in.)

The single disadvantage to using the raw format is that the file is so much larger than the jpg file, and this means that it needs much more memory space and also needs more resources to process.