This post is geared toward the fellow photographers who may drop by to read this b.l.o.g.
In digital photography, the term 'workflow' is the big buzzword; essentially its how we manage the large number of files that digital photography facilitates and how we process these into final 'products'. There are not many digital photographers who take photos straight out of camera (abbreviated SOOC) and are finished with them. Most go through some sort of process of post processing ( often referred to as PP) to enhance, color correct or artistically alter the photograph.
That being said, I am going to let you know how I approach this whole workflow process and the key software pieces, photoshop actions, etc. that I use to create my pictures.
All photos are taken with Canon DSLR's (40D and 30D) with various lenses - some wide, a telephoto zoom, some prime lenses, etc. at the RAW format (uncompressed, pure pixel goodness)
After the photos are taken, they are imported into an incredible application called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
This powerful RAW editor allows you to make key adjustments to the photos that could not be done as easily on a JPEG file. You can fix exposure levels, white balance, tone curves, white point recovery, black point (shadows), and then some. I often use Lightroom to tone my images and do general color corrections. I use it mostly as a library or organizing application, neatly organizing my whole collection of photography into folders, all fully accessible in one or two clicks.
Once the photos are generally managed for color, etc., they are then imported into Adobe Photoshop (CS3 on Mac OS X Leopard) for 'retouching'. This can include blemish removal, removal of unwanted elements, plus general local enhancements such as color boosting in certain areas and sharpening.
ACTIONS!
I am a huge fan and user of photoshop actions for the speed and great looks that can be achieved. There are a 1000 photoshop actions out there that are free I do not use these actions personally, but there are alot out there. You can also make your own using the action editor. If you find yourself doing alot of the same things in Photoshop, such as certain curves adjustments, you can set this up as an action to automate the process. It's really quite awesome.
There are a few action sets by other professionals that I use on a continual basis. These are most from Kevin Kubota (the photoshop action God), Boutwell's Totally Rad Action Mix (the most popular set probably out there now) and some by Parker J and NicoleV.
The possibilities with this actions is enormous. I will do some before and afters for you to check this stuff out!
Here is the sample image I'll use for the time being. This one is SOOC (straight out of camera) with some blue toning done in Lightroom.
Now if we apply some action to this image, we can do a number of different things. Using some of kubota's actions, we can get results like these:
Kubota Daily Mutlivitamin; The Look;
Daily Multivitamin; Punch Drunk (from the new V4 set)
Boutwell's Technicolor Dream World; Warm-it-up Kris, Boutwell's Magic Glasses
Boutwell's Old Skool Fast; Magic Glasses
Here you can see simple 'retouching' done at the click of a button. That's right, there is no meticulous photoshop work going on in these images. These are actions run by a single click of a mouse. Mind you, you can alter the look of the resulting action through layer opacities and the like, but alot of the time the results from running the action are very good, just salt to taste! Alot, alot, alot of digital photographers utilize actions in their workflow. The number of people who use Kevin Kubota's artistic tools is staggering. With everybody using the same actions, it is important to fit them into your style so that you can manipulate the image and not have it look like everyone else's. I use these actions for generally popping my image (compared to straight out of the camera), but with all these actions aside, the photography of the image is still the most important element. An action is not going to make a bad photo look great. But if you start out with a great shot, and use the actions to pop your image, you can create some really great stuff!
I am going to start posting some video tutorials (not sure when!) but I would like to demonstrate stuff like this using videos instead of long blocks of text.
Until next time,
Dave
