How to you save your files? Photoshop

wud

wud

Senior Member
Didnt really know what to write in the headline, of course I dont mean.. save.

I saw that in Lightroom you save your original file with all the actions you gave it, and you can always go back and reverse an action, if you want to.

Some of my pictures I worked a lot on, and then I tried saving them as photoshop files, but omg, that takes a lot of space. 150mb or so. Thats too much.

Now I'm going for saving a big jpeg (if someone suddenly write to me, if they can get the image in high resolution for printing), and then a smaller one for uploading to the internet with my watermark on, but.... honestly I sometimes forget. So I just save 800px watermarked jpeg file. Not so clever..


Any way to get around this problem with photoshop? Or do I really need to get Lightroom instead? I soooo love working in Photoshop, I must admit.


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BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Photoshop files will continue to get bigger and bigger the more layer work you preserve. Once you're happy with the adjustments you've made in layers and won't need to go back and tweak them then merge your layers (flatten the image or at least merge down the ones you're finished with). It'll greatly reduce your file size.
 
wud

wud

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
Photoshop files will continue to get bigger and bigger the more layer work you preserve. Once you're happy with the adjustments you've made in layers and won't need to go back and tweak them then merge your layers (flatten the image or at least merge down the ones you're finished with). It'll greatly reduce your file size.
Click to expand...

Ah, okay, But... if I flatten it, theres not really any need for saving it as a PS-file?
 
SkvLTD

SkvLTD

Senior Member
Well, seeing how you have a whopping D3, ~$100 gets you 1.5 if not 2TB hard drive, so 150mb a file isn't such a problem anymore. My 2 cents.
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
wud said:
Ah, okay, But... if I flatten it, theres not really any need for saving it as a PS-file?
Click to expand...
If you're working with RAW files Photoshop will create an .xmp file so every time you open that RAW file again, your adjustments are applied. If you decide you don't want those adjustments any longer, delete the associated .xmp file. Adding layers to an image will massively increase the file size, so as Jake points out, flatten the image or merge down to reduce the overall file size before saving. Lastly, I never actually save RAW files I'm working on since the .xmp file does that automatically. Finished files can be converted (saved as) *.tif (for high resolution saves) or *.jpg's (when you don't need the resolution).

And if you don't have a spare, external hard drive specifically for backing up your image files, I can't suggest too strongly you drop everything and get one. Yesterday.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
wud said:
Ah, okay, But... if I flatten it, theres not really any need for saving it as a PS-file?
Click to expand...

I said flatten, or at least merge adjustments down. I'm sure there are some adjustments you'll not want to revisit, right? And if so, you can always go back to square one with the RAW file. My question to you is, how often to you finish editting a photo, consider yourself finished and go back to it, days, weeks or months later? At some point it's really done. So why save the adjustment component pieces? Flatten it and be done with it, and decide if you want to save a PSD file or just produce a full size hi-res JPEG. Personally, I like the idea that I still have all my details to work with in the PSD file so I can do resizing if necessary, but even then it's not often that I couldn't do what I needed to from an archival jpeg.
 
D

Dave_W

The Dude
If you think you'll use Photoshop more than LR, then no need to buy LR since Bridge and ACR are really just LR with a different user interface. You can save the files coming from your camera in every format that LR allows. One thing that LR can do that I've not learned how to reproduce it with PS is to create full catalogue backups. I suspect Bridge can do this too but it's so darn easy in LR. For the most part, LR has become a photograph database and cataloguing program so unless they come up with some new gizmo for LR that does something really amazing, I doubt I'll be upgrading LR anytime soon.
 
wud

wud

Senior Member
Actually, I often re-edit a picture, if someone asked me to send it in high resolution, or if I open it for some other reason..

And I spend all of my money on the whopping D3 ;-) No, I got a harddrive, but I hate it and never use it. I should though. Okay okay, I do realize that I am the problem, not PS, lol.

Dont work with the raw file either, which I probably should.... but thats true, the xmp file saves all the information, just like Lightroom, I guess. Tried using the raw converter a few times, but now I only adjust highlights/shadows in there, and the rest I do in PS, and I can have tons of layers, if I'm having a good day.
 
wud

wud

Senior Member
Oh, and my biggest problem with saving in jpeg are, that I forget I should save 2 copies - 1 large and 1 semi-small with my watermark on.

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wud

wud

Senior Member
Horoscope Fish said:
What exactly does your workflow look like right now... Maybe some streamlining is in order?
Click to expand...

Going through the images in Bridge, deleting a bunch. Starting from top again looking for an image to edit.

Opening it, and well, just adjust the highlight/shadow in raw converter, and then the rest in PS. Often I close an image again, cause I'm not getting anything good. Browsing more, finding another image. In between I read at Nikonites, hehe.

Pictures taken like a serie, I often do an action with, if I need to just change some basics and/or the same with them all. Including resizing. But now I see I gotta get the action to save it first, and then resize + watermark.

Ah. That actually helped. I'll do an action which saves the images twice :-D
 
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