Recently, I’ve been having discussions with associate photographers regarding our workflow to get clear & vibrant images.  So, I thought this would be an excellent bit of information to share.

I identify two types of workflow:

• D.A.M (Digital Asset Management) workflow.
• Photo editing workflow.

D.A.M Workflow

During the course of any photoshoot, be it wedding, corporate event or studio, I apply the follow workflow:

1. Before the start of the job, I create a new folder on my MacBook Pro e.g “JonesWedding” and then a sub-folder called “NEF” (Yes…I shoot in RAW ).
2. During the course of the wedding/shoot, I’ll upload the images into the “NEF” folder – ALWAYS VIA A USB CF CARD READER!
3. At the end of the wedding/shoot, I copy the parent folder (e.g “JonesWedding”) on to a portable hard drive.
4. I then copy the parent folder (e.g. “JonesWedding”) to my desktop editing workstation.
5. I then import the new parent folder (e.g. “JonesWedding”) into Adobe Lightroom and create a new Catalog.
6. During the sorting or “culling” step of the workflow, I parse through each image in the collection; Images that I want to keep, I “Red” flag (F6 key).
7. At the end of the “culling” process, I filter the collection so that only the images that I “Red” flagged will be visible.
8. Now I’m ready to edit.

Photo Editing Workflow

1. I switch to the DEVELOP module in Adobe Lightroom.
2. I adjust White Balance (if necessary).
3. I adjust the Exposure, Fill-lighting & Recovery sliders to taste.
4. I adjust the Black slider to between 5-15 (to taste).
5. I adjust the Brightness slider to taste.
6. I adjust the Contrast slider to taste.
7. I increase the Clarity slider to about 75%.
8. I increase the Vibrance to about 65%.
9. I increase the Saturation to about 55%
10. I tweak the Curves…usually some derivation of the S-curve.
11. Dodge & burn to taste.
12. I then add a vignette to taste.
13. The settings are copied from one image to another and tweaked accordingly…kinda like a bee pollenting flowers.
14. When I satisfied with the look, I select all the flagged images and export the images as full resolution JPG @ 300DPI into a sub-folder “JPG” under the parent folder (e.g. “JonesWedding”).
15. Once all the images have been exported from Adobe Lightroom, I open up Photoshop for the final step that a run as a batch process.
16. For each image, an additional “Clarify” sharpening is applied to the image to remove “haze”.
17. For printing, the image is resized to the print size (e.g Jumbo, 6×8, 8×10).
18. For blogging, the image is resized, a watermark applied and a border wrapped around.
19. The final step is to apply final sharping.
20. That’s all folks.

I’ve been asked if we use Actions, the answer is “Kind of”.  The actions we use are once we’ve created to speed up our editing time (e.g resize & watermark) rather than “After Effects” actions.

In Lightrrom, it’s exactly the same…the presets I’ve created and use are simply applied once I have the right white balance and exposure.