A new guy with questions, for a change

[rob86]

Hi!
Im relatively new to photography and have a few questions, it would be awesome if people could help me out a bit!
Ive been doing this now for about 8 months and now have a new 450d, a new PC with Win7 and Photoshop elements 8.

I was wandering what people use for their workflow, ive read alot but feel a bit overwhelmed with all the differing systems and opinions to which is best!

Also do people convert files to DNG format, ive also heard differing opinions regarding this!

Any help will be hugely appreciated!

Thanks for your time,

Rob

 

[Mike Jackson]

I use canon DPP for most of my (minimal) processing. Occasionally I'll dip into PSP or Dynamic photo HDR for a bit more processing.

 

[Musicman]

ive read alot but feel a bit overwhelmed with all the differing systems and opinions to which is best!

Try a few different approaches and see what works best for you, would be my suggestion.

I use Adobe Lightroom

- Import from CF card
- broad tag with keywords etc and rough cut which ones I'm rejecting outright
- fine tune the tagging for specific shots
- stack similar shots and make my picks of which I'm going to use
- do any PP (white balance, levels etc) on the picks within Lightroom, or out Photoshop (perhaps via RPP) if it's necessary on occasion.
- Export output files where needed (e.g. JPEGs for my own web gallery or Flickr, TIFFs for print)

I keep my RAW files as RAW. I did dally with converting them to DNG a few years back, but ISTR that they ended up larger and there was some other issue that made me decide to keep them as they came out of the camera.

 

[sworks]

Try a few different approaches and see what works best for you, would be my suggestion.

I use Adobe Lightroom
- Export output files where needed (e.g. JPEGs for my own web gallery or Flickr, TIFFs for print)

Slightly off thread but can I ask why you print as Tiffs and not jpeg?
Thanks

 

[eccles]

@Sworks, This is mainly of relevance if you use raw to capture your images. DSLR cameras usually shoot either 12 bits per colour or 14 bits. If you convert the raw to jpeg then you lose 4 or 6 bits of colour information because the jpeg format is only 8 bits per colour. This doesn't matter on a web image since most monitors and graphics cards only support 8 bit (Usually specified as 24 bit because there are three primary colours). But Tiff format can be saved as 16 bit, thereby retaining the finer colour gradation. If your printer can print Tiffs directly then you have the potential to reproduce these smoother colour transitions.

 

[Musicman]

That's about it.

Furthermore, even on minimum compression, JPEG a lossy format and throws away colour information to get the smaller file sizes it achieves.

If I have the option of using a non-lossy file format, I'll use it.

Besides, it's a bit of an old habit of mine from the early 90s when TIFF was the only real option for photographs (scans in those days) and the overhead of decompressing JPEGs was tough on computer processors.

 

[sworks]

^ thanks for the advice. I don't print myself, can the likes of photobox etc print from tiffs? sorry for the mini hijack Rob

 

[Musicman]

I just had a look at their help and they only accept JPEGs.

Apologies if I was unclear. I was using the term 'print' as in publishing at a printers for brochures, etc. I probably should have said 'press' or 'repro'.

 

[phototuition]

Hi Rob, you say you're new to photography, it's a great hobby and it's all about taking photographs so there's no need to be overwhelmed by techniques and jargon most of which is irrelevant now and possibly always will be.

I suggest you learn to drive your camera, get to understand focusing, apertures, ISOs, shutter speeds and the like and leave raw convertors, DNG files and gamma to the geeks and HDR junkies.

You don't need any of this, you need to develop the skills to create great images, to understand light and shade, composition, colour and so on.

Elements 8 has a great raw convertor built in anyway which works seamlessly with the organiser and editor so if you wish to shoot raw you're ready to go.

John