Size matters - what do you do to your photos after editing

[DJdeRidder]

Iwan, I don't think that in the digital era ' space' is an isseu. You but space by the terrabite nowadays...

It's not about space, it's about efficiency.. If it works for you, perfect, I just think it's a bit of an old-fashioned workflow nowadays. You don't grab a phone book to call your best friend either (even if you have more than enough space in your house for a phone book!), you just find his number in your smartphone to call him, send him a Whatsapp message or email him a couple of photos. All possible because you added his contact details into your phone once. The same kind of efficiency improvements are (being) made in digital photography applications..

DJ is an expert on this (see his book Lightroom for Aviation Photographers at http://www.milaviapress.com/lightroom/book.php). His “trick” is relatively simple. He edits his photos in Lightroom, all the way until he is happy with the final result. Instead of saving his work as a JPG, he leaves it in Lightroom.

Lightroom did not really change his photo, but it only showed him a preview of what his actions would look like if applied to the photo. Instead of applying the actions, Lightroom creates a small “instructions file” and attaches it to the photo. This “instructions file” contains all things he did to achieve his final result, like lighting + 0,25, contrast -2, crop 5%, remove dustspot at X and Y, sharpness 70% at 0,7 radius, whitebalance 5125 etc.

Exactly and this makes it possible to edit the 'final result' if you're not happy with it. In a matter of seconds you can change sharpness from 70% at 0,7 radius to 80% at 1.0 radius without affecting the output result. That's very useful since Photoshop's Raw processing is improved every once in a while: after release of Adobe Camera Raw in 2003, the processing engine was improved in 2010 and will again be improved this year (in Lightroom 4 & Photoshop CS6)!

Right DJ ?

I couldn't have said it better, thanks for taking over my typing work.

[EHAM]

It my be interesting to know that when you have edited your photos in Lightroom, you can save them in all kind of formats, at any time you want, with one push of a button. Like a 3000x2000 TIFF in Adobe1998, 900x600 JPG in sRGB, 4425x3950 PSD in ProPhoto or any other image you need.

DJ is an expert on this (see his book Lightroom for Aviation Photographers at http://www.milaviapress.com/lightroom/book.php). His “trick” is relatively simple. He edits his photos in Lightroom, all the way until he is happy with the final result. Instead of saving his work as a JPG, he leaves it in Lightroom.

Lightroom did not really change his photo, but it only showed him a preview of what his actions would look like if applied to the photo. Instead of applying the actions, Lightroom creates a small “instructions file” and attaches it to the photo. This “instructions file” contains all things he did to achieve his final result, like lighting + 0,25, contrast -2, crop 5%, remove dustspot at X and Y, sharpness 70% at 0,7 radius, whitebalance 5125 etc.

Now when DJ needs his photo for his website, he just exports it from Lightroom. All he need to do is click the export button and tell Lightroom he needs it as a 900x600 JPG in sRGB. Lightroom then reads the original file, makes a copy of it and applies the instructions file, and resizes it to 900x600 JPG in sRGB. The original file will not be affected at all, and a copy of it will come out as the requested 900x600 JPG in sRGB. If DJ wants he can click the export button again and create a 1200x800 TIFF in the same way. And if he needs a 3000x2000 PSD tomorrow, he only needs to click export once more.

Why save all kind of formats, taking up so much space, if you can get any kind of file by just one click of a button ?

Right DJ ?

Cheers,
Iwan

That makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

[DJMikey]

All my editing is done in PS. I don't work with Lightroom, but reading DJ's and Iwan's postings about it makes me wonder if I should change my ways. Only downside is investing time to learn Lightroom I guess.

Now my - probably rather consuming - ways are as follows:
1. I categorised my harddisc for photography in folders: originals (subcategorised by aviation, family and friends, miscellaneous) and edits (subcategorised aviation by day and by country, rest by month);
2. After scanning the originals I save the ones I want to keep to the specific original folder;
3. Editing and save edits in 3 formats (printsize without logo, printsize with logo, 1600 pixelsize with logo for e-mail and forums) in the specific edit folder;
4. I also save the printsize pictures wich I've sent in to magazines, or are already been used by magazines/books, to a seperate folder.