My workflow for digital images

My workflow for digital images.

I shoot everything in RAW mode, this is because JPEG, the normal output for most digital cameras, is a lossy format, it loses some of the image data that the algorithm, deems unimportant. If you normally, simply take your memory card to Walmart, and feed it into their machine for a bunch of prints, or your post everything on Facebook or Instagram, this is fine. If you like to do post processing of your images, then it’s not fine.  The reason for this is that it throws away a little more of the image each time, so after a few edits there is nothing really left.  Back in the days when disk space cost $1/MB and a 56K modem was considered blindingly fast; the need for high compression was worth the cost of lower quality.  Today when $100 buys a 2TB drive, and 10Mbit/second is considered slow, we don't need as high compression.  

I consider the RAW file, as the undeveloped film, I use RAW conversion software (UFRAW), as a standard developer which leaves me with a PNG file; essentially a transparency or slide, rather than a negative. I go through, and any that are obviously unable to be salvaged, get sent to the trash folder. Some that are iffy, I will go back to the original RAW file, and load it into the conversion software, and play with it, to see if I can get a better result. If the result is not usable, then it also gets moved to trash.

The rest are fed through a custom program that issues them catalogue numbers, and moves them to the archive. It’s still a work in progress and will eventually get rewritten to become more efficient and to work better, but currently it works well enough.  I want to eventually get it to do the raw conversion, as one thread then show the image in a second thread, so I can either accept or reject it, and then catalogue it, again in a third thread.  

When I am considering images for use, I go back through the archive and see if I can find what I want, these are then fed through another bit of custom software, that does a bunch of things, like re-sizing, conversion to black and white, toning, adding the copyright notice, etc. If something doesn’t work, I fix it, will it ever be ready for public consumption, probably not. The end of the process is a Jpeg file, either suitable for printing or for posting.

E4700329

If you think you need a fancy new Mac for this, you don’t, I use a 10 year old PC that runs Fedora Linux on it, I can load images into Gimp which will allow intermediate processing, but often use my own software so that I can get the same result each time.

This weeks image, Catalog Number E4700329, I like the angle on this one, it's unusual and the petals have a translucent effect on the front, because the sun was above and slightly to the right of the flower.  The background is actually leaves that are dark green, they turn black when converted to black and white.

I think that is all for this week, see you next.

W