Digital Work Flow

 

With the introduction of digital cameras, the whole workflow of photography has completely changed after the initial capture stage.

Capture

This area of the workflow has remained unchanged, in that the photographer selects their subject, and takes light readings, either using a hand held light meter or via the camera’s metering.  If their is a strong colour cast, a white card is used to set the white balance on the camera by selecting the custom white balance option.

 

A suitable aperture is selected, either to isolate the subject from it’s surroundings or to capture both the subject and the surrounding.  A corresponding shutter speed is selected.  Then the focal length is chosen.

Once the photographer is happy with the composition, the shutter is released. The camera flips the mirror (used to direct the image to the viewfinder) up exposing the sensor to the light from the subject. The sensor, via it's photosites, reads the image and either writes the data in it's raw form directly to the memory card (if raw is selected) or processes the image as set up in the camera settings, compresses the image and writes it to the memory card (if JPEG is selected).

Transfer

Once the session has been completed, or the memory card is full, or the photographer chooses to the data is then transferred to the computer. This can either be via a card reader (external (USB, firewire, etc) or internal or by connecting the camera directly to the computer and reading the data (or images) from the memory card.

Once the images are downloaded they may be catalogued:

At this stage the photographer can first see how the images look, as the LCD screen on the back of the camera only gives them an idea of how the image looks.

Back Up

Once the images have been downloaded from the digital memory card, it is important that they are backed up, either to an external hard drive (with or without RAID) or to a removable storage medium, for example DVD, in case the internal hard drive fails.

Only after you are satisfied that a back up has been taken should you delete the images from the digital memory card.


Sorting and Grading


The next stage involves sorting though the images, to remove any images that are out of focus, in correctly metered, etc. Having already backed up the images, you can reload any images if you wish later on, for example where you only want an element of a photograph which is otherwise no good.

Converting from RAW


RAW format is the most powerful format for capturing photographs as no data is lost between the initial capture of the image and the editing process on the computer.

If you are using a RAW format, to capture the image, the next stage involves loading in the raw image to a RAW convertor (either the one supplied with the camera, a third party application like RAW Therapy or UFRAW), or your graphic editor (as long as it is capable of this).

 

At this stage the photographer can edit the images using a wide range of tools to achieve the final image that they were looking for.  It is important to note though, that if the image is not very good then the time spend in the editor trying to correct what the photographer got wrong in the first place, is wasted, because sometimes it does not work.

 

There are a number of editors available, see the photo editor page, which all have their advantages and disadvantages, the key here is to choose what you want.

 

 

Output

 

I have been very careful to title this part as some people choose to produce a hard copy of their work, others use their photography for use on the internet.

Using Online Printing Services

 

For printing, the photographer has two choices, either handle the printing in house (using their own printer) or using one of the many online photographic printing services, for example DS Colour Labs (shown below):

 

 

The main advantage with using online printing services like DS Colour Labs, is the low cost of printing, which is £1.05 for an A3 sized print (based on today’s prices), which would not be possible for anyone to match using their own printer.

 

Also the photographer could order prints on different papers, which otherwise, using their own printer, would increase the cost of printing much higher as they would have to buy packs of paper in different finishes, rather than use someone else’s paper stock.

 

I have used DS Colour Labs services and found them very good, with very good turn around times (from receiving the images, via online, to me receiving the prints.

 

One problem with online printing is that the photographer hands this responsibility over to another person (at the online company) who may not produce the results that the photographer was looking for, in a similar way to when someone takes a photographic film to a shop to process the film and make prints off the film. Personally, I know from my own experience that this can cause problems, in fact whilst I had some concert photographs (no flash used and spot metered) developed and printed, I learnt how valuable it was to discuss with the person who developed the film (where the shop has a mini-lab) what you are looking to achieve.

Also, the finished print may look darker than the original image, because the computer monitor is set up differently to the printer. In some cases the online company sometimes make the profiles (ICC) available to download, so that you can set up you system to match the settings on the publishers printer.

Printing at Home

As you can see from the screen grab above, you have a lot of control over the colour temperature of the photograph, especially useful when taking photographs of snow scenes which usually come out looking blueish, just like the photographer ;-)

You can also alter the exposure, effectively adding compensation.

Levels, curves, brightness and contrast can also be adjusted in the RAW file, retaining all the data that was captured when the shutter button was pressed.


Cropping

At this stage you can remove areas of the image that you do not want to include in the final image. This cropping of the image can prevent you from working on an area, which you will want to remove at a later stage.


Sizing

Once the image has been cropped it is important to size the image for the printing stage.


Post Production