Digital Work Flow

One of the most common questions I'm asked is how to process the images we take with our digital cameras. I'm going to give you an overview of that process and the tools we use. This is based on Canon cameras that use CF cards and produce ".CRW" raw files. The process will be similar for other camera manufacturers.

 

Step 1 - Downloading The Pictures

 

I take the CF out of the camera and place it in a PCMCIA CF card reader and put that in the laptop. Using Windows explorer I simply drag and drop the .CRW files into a folder on the C drive. When this is done, I copy the folder to our desktop workstation.

 

Step 2 - Evaluating The Pictures

 

Now the pictures are on our workstation, I use Capture One to view them and reject the ones that are not up to scratch, by marking them "Trashed". These are then deleted from the hard disk.

The remaining pictures are then sent to a backup disk on the server before any manipulation is performed.

 

Step 3 - Processing The Pictures

 

Using Capture One, each image is checked for exposure and sharpness. Adjustments are made and the image is then "developed" and stored in a seperate folder.

 

After developing, the picture is then loaded into Photoshop 7. Layers are created for "Levels", "Curves", "Contrast" and "Saturation" as required. After cropping, if necessary, the image is then sharpened using the "Unsharp Mask", or USM. The picture is saved in a "Full size" folder as a .PSD (Photoshop) file. Then the file is resized for the web in two stages with USM applied between each. Then it is saved into a "Web size" folder again, as a .PSD file.

 

The final stage is to use the "Convert to profile" command and set it to sRGB, then perform a "Save for web" command. This gives me control over the final file size of the .JPG file. I try to keep the files between 100 to 120 Kb.

 

 

 

That's all there is too it. I hope this has helped you in some way to understand the principles involved. If you have any questions or are sill confused, please feel free to conatact us.