Adobe Digital Workflow
Keywords: software, postprocessing, lightroom, photoshop, adobe, cs2
Using Adobe Lightroom Beta and Adobe Photoshop CS
This is a free series of 72 articles, divided into separate pages (sections). On this page is the introduction to the series containing, hints, tips, and tutorials on using Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS2 to manage and edit your digital photography.
Digital workflow, by my definition, is everything that happens to an image from the moment you see it through your camera's lens to the final delivery on your computer screen or website, as a photographic print, or printed in a magazine, brochure or book.
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Adobe Lightroom (Beta) - on an Apple 30-inch Cinema Display
Baktapur, Nepal © George Mann |
This workflow is not meant for wedding or event photographers but rather for advanced amateur photographers and professional illustrative, art, travel, and advertising photographers. Those of us who do on occasion take hundreds of photographs per day but in the end are most interested in getting the best we can out of a select few images.
Wedding and event photographers can at times take thousands of photographs on a given day and they need to present all their images to their clients as quickly as possible. Their motivation and work methods are different from what we are discussing in this series.
The basic steps involved in my Digital Photography Workflow:
a) Capturing the image - this includes setting up the proper parameters in your camera, making decisions about image type, image size, color balance, exposure, focusing, and in-camera image enhancement.
b) Storing the image - for me this is quite simply copying the image from the memory card to one or more hard disk drives and DVDs for archival storage of the original file.
c) Cataloging the image - this is the stage where metadata is added to make it easier to manage your image library. I keep this stage separate from the archival storage stage because it does not necessarily need to store everything you have shot and can be project driven. Cataloging software also changes over time and archival storage has to last forever.
d) Editing the image - there seems to be absolutely no dispute, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is the leader in this field. Editing an image can be as simple as resizing and cropping an image or as complicated as creating a fantasy world out of hundreds of original image files.
e) Cataloging and Archiving the Edited image - it is important to keep a permanent and accessible record of your digital darkroom work without disturbing the original archived images.
f) Presenting, Printing & Distributing images - the final output of all our efforts. Websites, photo albums, archival quality prints, art galleries, online galleries & image banks, newspapers, magazines, books, commercial clients, etc.
All of the articles in this series:
P.S. Please do not get upset if your personal experience and views are different from my own. These opinions are mine exclusively and do not reflect the views or policies of any of the manufacturers mentioned in these articles ...... George Mann
Originally written on June 1, 2006
Last updated on January 6, 2021
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