My latest musings about photography

Gary Eickmeier wrote:


David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

Yes, last month I think it was. (One of four weddings I've done in
the last 10 years, but yes.) I've said at considerable length in a
number of posts that the wort of workflow a photographer needs/wants
depends among other things on the kind of work they're doing, and
cited wedding photographers as people likely to need to work with high
volumes and need to not spend much time on individual pictures. So it
doesn't surprise me that you don't -- for wedding pictures.

Amen, bro. Which brings up a great question: I've been wondering about
the practicality of just sending the lab my camera files (JPEGs) and
letting them sort out the corrections - just like we used to do with
film. That would really simplify our lives. Have you ever thought about it?

I've thought about it, and WHCC even has an option for it -- they do
either uncorrected printing (so I get full control), or for slightly
more they say they duplicate what a film pro lab normally did.

I haven't tried that approach, though; I'm an occasional wedding
shooter, not a pro, so I haven't refined my exposure to a high art, and
haven't got desperately tired of hand adjusting the troublesome shots.

Also, think about shooting a wedding on slides; because that's what
doing it in digital amounts to. Much more likely to need human
attention than shooting it on negatives, since you have to avoid any
risk of overexposure and hence often have modest underexposure.

Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Amen, bro. Which brings up a great question: I've been wondering about
the practicality of just sending the lab my camera files (JPEGs) and
letting them sort out the corrections - just like we used to do with
film. That would really simplify our lives. Have you ever thought about
it?

Why not shoot RAW, and let Adobe Bridge automatically correct the shots, (or
any other similar software automation) if you are happy with that sort of
non-control? Far better than having the lab do a similar job on JPEG's.

MrT.

Mr.T wrote:
Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Amen, bro. Which brings up a great question: I've been wondering about
the practicality of just sending the lab my camera files (JPEGs) and
letting them sort out the corrections - just like we used to do with
film. That would really simplify our lives. Have you ever thought about
it?

Why not shoot RAW, and let Adobe Bridge automatically correct the shots, (or
any other similar software automation) if you are happy with that sort of
non-control? Far better than having the lab do a similar job on JPEG's.

You've got a point there - RAW programs auto correct when they open the
files - and do a darned good job of it. Better, I think, than pressing
the auto-correct function on a JPEG.

Gary Eickmeier

Gary Eickmeier wrote:

Obviously, you don't destroy the original when you "Save as" and put the
edited file somewhere else. I typically open my file, manipulate it as
desired, then Save as a TIF so that I don't lose anything by compressing
it more, and so that the original remains untouched. You aren't actually
operating on your original file when you edit; you are just using the
copy of it that you imported into Photoshop. No destoying is going on,
unless you just hit "Save" and it replaces your camera original.

Gary Eickmeier

The disadvantage of save as is that you end up with multiple versions of
the same file, causing versioning and backup issues.

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Obviously, you don't destroy the original when you "Save as" and put
the edited file somewhere else. I typically open my file, manipulate
it as desired, then Save as a TIF so that I don't lose anything by
compressing it more, and so that the original remains untouched. You
aren't actually operating on your original file when you edit; you are
just using the copy of it that you imported into Photoshop. No
destoying is going on, unless you just hit "Save" and it replaces your
camera original.

Gary Eickmeier


The disadvantage of save as is that you end up with multiple versions of
the same file, causing versioning and backup issues.

Cheers,

Wayne

How is it any more versions than your method? And my saved files don't
have multiple layers to save.

Gary Eickmeier

just like we used to do with
film. That would really simplify our lives. Have you ever thought about
it?

and which Harvey norman will do this at 19cents a print?

unfortunately the drive for cheaper prints by most consumers is going to
leave photograpahrs worse off.....

hell, you can hardly cover material costs.... colour corrections?!?!?

kosh

Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Obviously, you don't destroy the original when you "Save as" and put
the edited file somewhere else. I typically open my file, manipulate
it as desired, then Save as a TIF so that I don't lose anything by
compressing it more, and so that the original remains untouched. You
aren't actually operating on your original file when you edit; you
are just using the copy of it that you imported into Photoshop. No
destoying is going on, unless you just hit "Save" and it replaces
your camera original.

Gary Eickmeier


The disadvantage of save as is that you end up with multiple versions
of the same file, causing versioning and backup issues.

Cheers,

Wayne

How is it any more versions than your method? And my saved files don't
have multiple layers to save.

Gary Eickmeier

Hi Gary,

It isn't necessarily, but it can be. Before using adjustment layers I
would save the original, a slightly tweaked version and then multiple
versions as I played with the image or parts there of. Since neither
Windows or Mac OS have auto file version numbering (something the Dec
System 20 I was a systems programmer on over 25 years ago even had) I
tack a version number on the end of the file name. With adjustment
layers I find that number reduced, since I may include multiple
adjustment layers that I leave turned on or off in the one file version.

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Gary Eickmeier wrote:


Obviously, you don't destroy the original when you "Save as" and put
the edited file somewhere else. I typically open my file, manipulate
it as desired, then Save as a TIF so that I don't lose anything by
compressing it more, and so that the original remains untouched. You
aren't actually operating on your original file when you edit; you
are just using the copy of it that you imported into Photoshop. No
destoying is going on, unless you just hit "Save" and it replaces
your camera original.

Gary Eickmeier


The disadvantage of save as is that you end up with multiple versions
of the same file, causing versioning and backup issues.

Cheers,

Wayne

How is it any more versions than your method? And my saved files don't
have multiple layers to save.

Gary Eickmeier

Hi Gary,

It isn't necessarily, but it can be. Before using adjustment layers I
would save the original, a slightly tweaked version and then multiple
versions as I played with the image or parts there of. Since neither
Windows or Mac OS have auto file version numbering (something the Dec
System 20 I was a systems programmer on over 25 years ago even had) I
tack a version number on the end of the file name. With adjustment
layers I find that number reduced, since I may include multiple
adjustment layers that I leave turned on or off in the one file version.

There's been some argument now and then about maybe adding version
numbering to Sun's ZFS filesystem, and it got interesting with the old
TOPS-20 hacks saying how simple and useful it was an other people saying
how it would pollute your directories and make everything totally
confusing :-).

(I was a customer from 1977-1979, supported TOPS-20 and VMS in the field
until 1981, and was in Marlboro in the layered products group until 1985).

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

There's been some argument now and then about maybe adding version
numbering to Sun's ZFS filesystem, and it got interesting with the old
TOPS-20 hacks saying how simple and useful it was an other people saying
how it would pollute your directories and make everything totally
confusing :-).

(I was a customer from 1977-1979, supported TOPS-20 and VMS in the field
until 1981, and was in Marlboro in the layered products group until 1985).

HI David,

TOPS-20 was pretty great and was a nice OS to do sys admin and systems
programming on back then. If I remember rightly you could set a
preference in a config file as to how many back versions you wanted to
keep. Saved my bacon on a number of occasions.

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Paul Rubin wrote:
"Wayne J. Cosshall" writes:
I love adjustment layers too.
It is not only hobbyists who go back and revisit. Also the fine art
photographers (who may be professional) often revisit old images as
their 'vision' changes.

Could someone explain what adjustment layers are? If you want to edit
non destructively, why not just make a copy of the original file
before starting to edit?
Mostly, without adjustment layers, once you make an adjustment, those
pixels are changed forever (you can't get them back to where they
started). Generally, the more changes you make that way, the lower the
quality of the image because the pixels keep getting "mucked" over. with
adjustment layers, the original pixels stay intact.