I think i use too much software....

Ukkor

Ukkor

Messages
333
Name
David
Edit My Images
Yes
Whenever i sort through my football photographs, i think i have a really long way of doing it. Here are my stages:

1. Picasa - Look through, delete carp ones, crop, and straighten if need

2. Photoshop - Auto levels + save for web

3. Watermark program - To add watermark (surprisingly enough!)

and becoming a stupid habit that i need to cut out

4. Jalbum - for compressing further for website (strange problem as my gallery (coppermine) only accepts pictures compressed from here), and odd bit of sharpening.

Whilst all this doesn't take as long as it sounds, it can get a bit confusing at times. Thats why i need advice on ways to cut this down, and do in as few steps as possible. I am still relative noob when it comes to PS, but am willing to learn. I reckon i could do sharpening in PS,and try to compress further, so need advice on that if poss. I would also appreciate your views on how this can be cut down further.

Thanks
 
Lightroom has plugins which automate steps 3 and 4.
It also quickly lets you do 1 and integrates well with 2.
Should be able to download a demo of it somewhere and try it out.
 
Benbo said:
Lightroom has plugins which automate steps 3 and 4.
It also quickly lets you do 1 and integrates well with 2.
Should be able to download a demo of it somewhere and try it out.
Click to expand...

Cheers mate, ill give it a look!
 
You can automate 2, 3 and 4 in Photoshop as well, and you can also create batch processes for adding the watermark. If you have Photoshop CS3 you may already have Bridge on your machine which will let you reviewthe images.
 
Read up on 'Actions' for Photoshop. If your happy with processing one image the same an the next and adding a watermark and save, you could record an action to do just that. Then you would only need to open an image and play your a action for the pre-recorded stuff to be applied.

Sounds a bit daunting, but it's prety easy. It's easier to record a macro if you have a run through and write down the steps that you want, then record. F9 brings up the actions pallet, create new action, record what you want, stop recording.
 
andrewc said:
Benefit of Picasa and Jalbum is they are free!
Click to expand...

Sure - that's true. But they don't do the job very well. :)

Options really boil down to Photoshop and/or Lightroom (Adobe want you to buy both) and which of those people opt for tends to be user preference.
 
Actually I find Jalbum very good for publishing a gallery with paypal integration. Use it regularly.

Picasa is also pretty good for fast sorting of images - I often shoot motorsport sprints and have to sort a days shooting into separate folders for each car and find that Picasa is my current weapon of choice for doing so. Its faster to do it in Picasa than in Apple Aperture or Lightroom.

The key is using the right tool for the right job and the right time and in the right order!

For what I want, Jalbum and Picasa are very useful.
 
As Chas pointed out Bridge is usefull for previewing and picking. I don't normaly use it as my old version of CS2 and old version of bridge don't support D60 and D300 raw files plus I now have LR2. However if shooting JPEG or you have a newer version which opens the raw files...

Pick the selected images from Bridge, which then open in photoshop for editing.
Crop as necesary.
Play your custom action, which could be assigned to a single key press like F12 and does the following...
1. Auto levels
2. creates a duplicate layer with 'highpass' filter and 'overlay' layer option for sharpening
3. Creates watermark as text layer with 50% opacity and inner shadow for the layer property. Position where you require.
4. Flattens the image
5. Saves the image to a folder on the desktop and then closes the image in PS.

(Record a couple of different actions for different levels of sharpening or positioning the watermark in different places)

Upload the folder, print or archive as required.
Cup of tea and chocky digestives.
 
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