Camera File Settings

[john michael white]

Guys, I am curious how you have chosen to shoot your files in order to cut down on workflow time.

[John Bennett]

Once you get used to raw, theres no going back. There really isn’t any compelling reason not to, with the possible exception of being limited by card or hd space. I dont see much benefit to shoot raw + jpeg either.

Adobe rgb for me as its the colour space the publishing industry uses.

With regards to workflow time I really dont find it time consuming at all. Unless I’m working on an image for the explicit purpose of “creating something. I can process a raw file in no time, most dont require much work.

If I need to adjust exposure by more than +/- .20, its headed to the trash bin.
White balance I may tweak by upto 100 or 200 pts but no more.
Contrast, Saturation etc I have a preset level in acr and I adjust from that up or down a bit accordingly.

from there its off to PS where I may check the shadows/highlights and make a minute adjustment with Curves and then finally apply a “general amount” of sharpening (preset) that still leaves room for more sharpening as your amount of sharpening really should be determined by print size. So I dont want to over sharpen a full res image that and editor in turn cant sharpen dependant on what print size they are running.

I would say on average I dont spend much more than 1 or 2 minutes /image. Sometimes more, sometimes less and usually the mores are a result of dust specs when I stop down past f11 becoming visible etc.

Some images I dont even bother doing. I just leave them in their original RAW for later use/processing etc…Say the wife wants an image of one of the kids printed..Then I do it.

[john michael white]

Thanks John.

[John Bennett]

Give DPP a try John. Its Canons propeitary raw converter and should be on the disk that came with the 10D. If you dont have the CD you can download it from Canon USA, which you’ll want to upgrade to current version anyways if you load off your CD.

Its been a long time since I’ve used it but from what I remember its pretty good and does allow for batch processing and batch edits….say where you’ve tweaked WB and other settings and want all 5 or 10 images from a sequence processed the same. Many people (incl myself) find it does a better job of reproducing colours than ACR but ACR is simply way more powerful.

If I remmber correctly you can set all kinds of presets that are very similiar to the presets you choose or customize for in camera processing of jpegs. In fact Im pretty sure they even have the same presets as well as “Picture Styles” which you can use as starting points for Landscapes wher saturation is boosted, or Portraits where less sharpening is applied and youcan customise them to.

What I didnt really care for was its interface and WB control. I like the kelvin sliders.

Failing that try the free trial version of PS Elements 6.0 which has 90% of ACRs tools, much like it has 80% of what you’ll want from a full version of PS. Then you can always go back to DPP if you dont want it.

[john michael white]

Yes, since switching to digital, I have always shot RAW (Adobe)and have post processed as needed for touch ups etc.  I have never used the embeded JPEGs.

My Canon 10D didn’t come with Digital Photo Professional.  I will have to check that out and try to download it from Canon’s website.

Thanks for all of your help and suggestions guys.

UPDATE:

[david king]

I believe if you shoot raw plus jpeg your post time will be cut down because whatever software your using will not have to create a jpeg for the preview. I would stay away from srgb because it is a much smaller color space than Adobe RGB. You want all the color info you can get for you final edit. I use srgb only for web images.

[Eric DeWitt]

I guess i will be the lone dissenter here and say that i shoot mostly jpeg, probably 90% of the time.

[john nesselrode]

I’m not shooting for publication, etc. Just doing all this for fun, so my bar may be lower. But, the epiphany for me came with adoption of Lightroom.

Before, I vacillated back and forth between RAW and jpeg because my work never flowed well for me using Photoshop Elements and ACR, or the other converters I tried.

With LR now the files are all RAW – I haven’t even thought of using jpeg in months. The files come into LR nicely and I do 95% of the adjustments there. I don’t do in-camera jpeg, nor do I create a jpeg in LR unless I plan on outputting is somewhere – like a printer or Smugmug or Blurb.

Don’t know that that helps, but for me life got significantly better with LR.

[john michael white]

I worked on some portrait images over the weekend, and it was definitely faster, but I am still hitting some workflow issues that are annoying.

First, my Canon 10 D embeds a small Jpeg file in the RAW file.

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