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workflow
By booyaabooyaabooyaa | June 25, 2006
Working methodically helps maintain consistancy in your photography. Today I would like to share my own workflow, feel free to share your own via comments to this post.
My workflow can be defined as the following points:
- Import the pictures using Picasa, weed out any pictures of focus or those that can’t be fixed in Gimp.
- Try out some test crops and midtone adjustments. Make a note of any pictures that need rotation.
- Categorise/name the batch.
- Use the “Email This” feature to post to Flickr, or proceed to use the real image manipulation tool (Gimp).
- Rotate picture.
- Fix exposure using the Levels tool.
- Clone out defects if applicable.
- Sharpen using the Unsharpen Mask.
- Resize and crop if necessary.
- Save file with a more descriptive name.
- Upload picture using Flickr upload tool.
- Delete images from the memory card.
Does your workflow have similar steps? Even the last step (deleting images from the card) may seem trivial, but if it’s not an automatic process, more often than not, you will find yourself uploading duplicate pictures, and limiting the number of shots available for your next shoot.
I rarely get a chance to go beyond step 4 and just email out the pictures from Picasa. This is unfortunately the fault of my current computer rig. My PC is far too slow to do heavy image processing using Gimp, also I lack the necessary drawing tablet to make the fine adjustments. On the plus side I’m also very lucky that nearly all my photos have a level horizon and more often than not are correctly exposed (okay, I know I have an issue with clouds…) so a quickfix in Picasa suffices.
My only reservations about not going beyond step 4 is that Picasa’s jpeg export quality is not adjustable, I think it’s roughly around 85-90% lossiness. Also uploading multiple images will cause them to be resized down to 1024 pixels. All of this is further exacebated by the fact that my camera only stores image as jpegs.
When the new mac arrives, I’ll make more of an effort to use the real image manipulation tools. For now Picasa suffices.
As a parting shot, I should point out I nearly always process my pictures on Sunday. It takes the edge of an exhaustive and demanding workflow process. If you’re not spending a few hours doing this, you’re either not taking enough photos or you take pictures that are so good they need little post production so why are you reading this post? 
[tags]photography, workflow, picasa, gimp[/tags]
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