Basic Work Flow For Photographers

One of the most important stages of working with photos is the stage where the raw file is converted for use. Imagine that you have 100 images to process and you want them relatively quickly. At 2 minutes per image that's three hours plus! That's a lot of time.However with a typical wedding, you would quite likely be producing around 1000 images. Typically that would mean, that you would spend a day shooting the wedding, returning with about 2000 images and then spend the week editing and processing. You need to work much more quickly than that if you are going to be successful.

Today with cards holding 1000's of images we cannot afford that amount of time. But we still want good results.  [1000 x 2 minutes = 2000 minutes or over 33 hours.]

Establishing a consistent workflow is an essential part of digital photography. Having a workflow will help ensure that you handle your images the same way each time. Consistency is important as it establishes your style but also makes your files easier to locate. Give particular attention to naming and metadata.  A proper workflow will help you move, rename, and archive your photographs and should substantially reduce the risk of losing that important shot. When you know that you have the image and cannot locate it it can become very frustrating. If you have a large data file it may take you hours unless your images are named and filed correctly.

As a basic workflow suggestion here is something very basic.  It is worth writing out your workflow and pasting it in an area alongside your computer. It may help to keep you on track.  At the very least, there is always a certain discipline that needs to be adopted as part of supporting your photographic technique. So here is something basic.


1. Use a card reader (not your camera, it's much too slow) and transfer your images to your computer.  Having a reasonably fast computer is always good at this point. I will often load my images to transfer into two separate hard drives and then go away and do something else for five minutes. When you return the files have been transferred and are ready for examination.

2. Be ruthless. Examine your photos and discard those that don't make the cut. You will probably lose a third of your images. Are they in focus? Are they well composed? Do they make sense?  You cannot be emotional when looking through your photographs. In many instances you may find that you have taken two or three that are essentially the same. Choose the one that really works. The system that has been adopted where images are given some sort of rating is superb. Rating your images with a simple scoring system of one through to 5 is simple but very effective.

3. Using your editing program re name the images and add key words. This is best done as a batch. The more data you can add the better. Make sure that you amend the meta data to show that you are the author.  Your camera has already recorded information such as camera settings. Most cameras can be programmed to write the authors name, dates and file. It saves time. It's good to add some sort of brief description so that your computers search programs can find the images quickly.

4. Now you are ready for processing.  Don't be too concerned about the thousands of tools that have been built into the editing program. For photography you will rarely use use many of these tools. A basic processing sequence will work fine. Essentially, it comes down to white balance so that you get natural colours. Then it's a matter of looking at the vibrancy and dominant colours in the image. Make sure that the image pops so to speak. Then you need to look at the crop to determine anything that needs discarding. There are often very good photographs sitting inside bad composition. By cropping out that which does not make sense you may find that you have a winner. Then it is simply a matter of sharpening and addressing any noise issues that may affect the final image. Remember the sequence. White balance, colours, crop, sharpen, noise.

 I have purposely omitted healing tools from this basic sequence. If you are selling images you will need to go through and remove any spots using the healing tool. This adds minutes to each image so it is best kept for just those images that will be supplied.


5. When you are satisfied that these are addressed then save as your preferred file.

You will probably have your own favorite settings for colours based on the camera that you use. Everyone is different. But never forget to correct white balance as step one and save sharpen/noise to the end.

Just simple tips but once you are consistent you will get faster and enjoy your photography more!  There are complicated discussions regarding workflow for photographers but please remember that photography is being about with your camera taking photographs. It is not about sitting in front of a computer doing endless editing. This all takes time and unless you are being paid considerably for this time you need to work quickly. Enjoy!