Workflow

[Åmund]

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I'm eagerly awaiting my M9 with lenses (supposed to come medio february, but who knows?) and would like some recommendations on workflow. I am quite new to (serious) digital photography and would appreciate a step-by-step cook-book on what to do after the shutter has been released till the image is safely stored as JPG on my Macbook Pro. I know this has been discussed on earlier threads, but I have't managed to find them. So ... please ?

 

Åmund

[adli]

If you walk over to the "Digital Post Processing Forum" there is a thread on workflow examples there. Should be a starting point.

 

Apart from that, I would say that Lightroom which it shiped with the M9 is a very good workflow tool. If you want to learn how to use it, I suggest the video-tutorial at Luminous Landscapes Adobe Lightroom 2 Tutorial

 

BTW, my M9 was suppose to be delivered in November, December, January and now Mid-February....

[rob_w]

I suggest you work with Lightroom as it is shipped with the M9. And you will really need to work with DNG rather than JPG to get the best from your investment.

 

You will need a tutorial or a book to feel comfortable with Lightroom, although it is pretty straightforward to use the essential features once you find your way around. Either the Luminous Landscape tutorial series as the previous poster mentioned, or one of the main books on the product, such as those by Martin Evening or Scott Kelby.

 

If it will help, here are some notes on photography software I recently wrote to someone who is a similar newbie to serious digital photography, as you describe yourself. (I think, forgive me if this is too simplistic)

 

Photographers need software for:

 

Library management: store, sort, classify, recall, select, review, assess, delete

Development: edit, change, crop, colour balance, rotate/straighten, convert to black and white, brighten or darken, change contrast, remove spots, remove red-eye

Slideshow: output selected photos as a slideshow for viewing on another PC or a TV

Printing: prepare a set of photos to print, including adjustments to colour and contrast for the printed page as opposed to viewing on screen

Web display: upload photos to sharing sites such as Facebook, for a start, and going on to photo forums and specialist photo display sites

 

The first fork in the road is: will you ‘develop’ your own photos? The data from the camera’s electronic sensor is initially captured as a ‘RAW’ file (called a DNG in Leica's case) – which is a readout from the sensor's pixels without any further processing. The RAW file cannot be viewed; it must first be 'developed'. All cameras can also produce a JPEG (.JPG) file in the camera itself. JPEG is an industry standard for image files, so a JPEG file can be viewed, printed, emailed to someone else as a picture, on almost all computer systems. The problem with JPEGs is that they are relatively low quality. (There is also a high quality standard for image files called TIFF, which we can talk about that some other time.)

 

Most casual users just work with the JPEG file from the camera. The trouble is the JPEG file is based on in-camera processing using lots of default assumptions about lighting, colour balance and so on, and the process 'throws away' a lot of data that can be used by smarter programs if you do any adjustments to the picture on your own computer. Serious amateurs and professionals always work from the RAW file because this gives more flexibility and the opportunity to produce a better image than the basic JPEG provided by camera.

 

If you are just using the JPEGs from the camera a simple image management system like Google’s Picassa or Apple’s iPhoto will do the job very well. Both are free.

 

For more serious use you have two mainstream choices: Lightroom and Aperture. The first is produced by Adobe and is what I use, the second is made by Apple and only works on Macs. Both are moderately expensive but give you the ability to produce much improved pictures. I use Lightroom (LR) because it works on both PCs and Macs, and I think it is more of an ‘industry standard’. LR does all of the tasks I outlined at the beginning (in fact my list is based on LR’s structure). LR is not cheap, but it is very powerful.

 

For more extensive image manipulation some photographers use Adobe Photoshop as well as LR. It is a much older, more mature program used by graphic artists which provides even more extensive image manipulation capabilities but does not include Library and some of the Output modules of LR so is typically used along with LR or something similar. I have a copy of Photoshop as well but I rarely use it. LR does all the image processing you would think of as 'bringing out the best in the photo itself'. Photoshop is really for graphic manipulation, such as putting different heads on bodies, inserting other images into pictures, completely changing the lighting, blending several pictures, and so on. There is a light version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements which is relatively cheap and gives you most of the features to play around with if/when you want to do that sort of stuff.

 

One thing I do not like about iPhoto is that it has a self-contained file system. The way LR works, the RAW files from the camera are stored in conventional files and folders. Each time you make a change to the image, LR keeps that change in an image processing file but does not change the RAW file itself. This makes it easy to backup and restore the RAW files using any backup system (including Time Machine) and keeps LR's own library of image processing changes relatively small, hence also easy to backup.

 

You might want to start with the camera JPEGs but keep the RAW data files as well so that as you get more advanced you can switch to one of the more powerful programs. Basically, that is what I did when I started taking digital photos, although it turned out to be a hassle, truth to tell, because I had to re-do a lot of early work that I did in Photoshop Elements and other programs. I ended up with a 1000 or so photo files that I had processed in these other programs, the most precious of which I had to re-process to get right once I started using LR.

 

One last point: monitor calibration. If you are going to view or process images on your own computer it is best to calibrate the screen so that the colours it shows are correct. There are various calibration tools available to do this, none of which are free. All of us start out hoping this wont be necessary ("Wot! Spend more money after I have just forked out for a camera and an image processing package?") but we all end up caving in and buying one. Again, it can wait a while, but it is probably in your future once you start to get serious.

 

Trust this helps ...

 

Robert

[jaapv]

Another thing to do, and it might help you pass the wait for your camera, is to purchase a book about Lightroom by Scott Kelby. It will give you cook-book style recipes to improve your photographs. (If you can stand his jokes )

[Åmund]

Thank you, everybody!

 

It really is a great help to have chaps like you to turn to when life gets rough!

 

Åmund :D

[rob_w]

Your welcome Amund. Come back and tell us how you get on!

 

Robert

[Leicakillen]

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I started to use Lightroom at the delivery of my M9 beginning of December - I must say I really love it! I really recommend using it.

In the learning process I have been using the free TV shows on Adobes we site - highly recommended! This is for me a much better way to get started than reading the books about the program.

 

/Anders