Better Workflow?

I shoot RAW. Import directly into Lightroom. Do my adjustments and then export into the highest quality J-pegs to a file. I then click on those files when wanting prints done. When dealing with an online service such as Shutterfly, Meridian, H&H etc... make sure your aware of any adjustments they may make. When uploading your images read everything while going through the process. Some places do touch ups. Something you may overlook and get surprised when getting the images back from them. I just did a Father daughter dance of the parent and child. I sent one image to Sam's club to see how my adjustments looked on paper before sending them of to Meridian. The file I sent was already sized to 5x7. But for some stupid reason they cropped again cutting the feet off which is why I don't use them.

I save all the pictures on a folder on the pc, then check each picture and delete any blurred or out of focus pictures,

If I have taken a lot of pictures that day, say 60 shots, I will put some in a couple of sub folders, say 20 in each.


then open in lightroom to edit them.

I import, open in NX-D and kill the first batch if badly framed, boring or not visually pleasing. Then I go for round two at 100% and kill what is not sharp.

What's left I adjust the shot exposure, sometimes pull some highlights or shadows and export to edit in RawTherapee.

There I do the first edit and then export to the size I'll be using which I then edit again to tweak and sharpen and save in its final form. If something else is required, I export to GIMP to fix/remove/add whatever needed.

At times I do things different but this one is my most economic approach in work/time.

Thanks all. In what form do you guys send the final product off for printing. If jpg, what size file is best? Thanks again!

zutty said:

Thanks all. In what form do you guys send the final product off for printing. If jpg, what size file is best? Thanks again!

Click to expand...

I would convert your .NEF raw files to TIFF if you are going to do any serious printing.

Yeah, TiFF is lossless while JPG comes at a price. If you print, you want all your original pixels.

TiFF 16bit can be a huge file however.

Good link that goes over the pros and cons of file formats:
Image file formats - TIF, JPG, PNG, GIF

I am sure there are a ton more on the interweb.

AC016 said:

I would convert your .NEF raw files to TIFF if you are going to do any serious printing.

Click to expand...

This bears repeating: TIFF for printing. Absolutely.
....

I do convert the nef to tiff but those tiff files get really huge! Is that normal?

zutty said:

I do convert the nef to tiff but those tiff files get really huge! Is that normal?

Click to expand...

Yep that's very normal. You could use compression to get a smaller size. I use uncompressed and 140Mb for a file is about standard.

But if I want to send out a tiff file to a lab for printing, their file size limit is 40mb (NPL). How do I retain the quality of the file while reducing the file size?