Yesterday Marci and I had the opportunity to go on Mount Hermon’s new canopy tour. The canopy tour is a series of zip lines and sky bridges which extend over Bean Creek canyon. At the highest point you are 150 feet off the ground. I took this short clip during that length of the zip line. You can see me pass over the longest of the sky bridges. The tour was pretty much amazing, and I can’t wait until they extend it with a couple longer zips down the canyon. The longest zip line (my favorite) was 440ft. I will have more photos from the tour up on my flickr account.

Both of my digital cameras can shoot in RAW, so I either shoot RAW +jpeg or RAW alone. I am moving more towards RAW by itself whenever I know I will be doing post-processing, and just shooting jpeg when I want to take a lot of photos without worrying about the post processing. My current software package is Photoshop Elements 6 which has an organizer similar to Adobe Bridge, and Elements has it’s own RAW Converter which opens up when you choose to edit the RAW files.

So here is my current digital photography workflow:

1. Capture images in RAW or jpeg.
2. Import images to Elements Organizer using the image import utility (similar to Bridge).
3. At this point I can choose to rename the files, but I usually just accept the camera’s format and save the files in folders by the capture date which is an automatic setting in the program. Some cameras do not have a continuous numbering system, so in those cases I would rename all the images by date in a ‘YYYYMMDD_increment’ format to give them unique file names.
4. Next I use the star rating system to keep track of which images I want to edit and which ones I need to delete at a later time. One approach is to give all the images a default 2 star rating and then make your selects by giving higher star ratings based on the image quality. I default with zero stars and give two stars for images I would like to edit further. If I have multiple images with the same subject matter I will give a three star rating to distinguish my favorite image etc. Zero star images are probably just taking up space on my hard drive, and should be deleted later.
5. Once I’ve identified the images I want to process further, I will click on the ‘full edit’ option. If the image is a RAW file the program will open the RAW Converter, and otherwise it will just open the editor.
6. In the RAW Converter I will make global changes to the RAW file which usually includes adjusting the “Recovery” slider for blocked up highlights and then changing the blacks and fill light if necessary. I also typically adjust the “Clarity” slider for local contrast. I use the other settings if needed, and I save the sharpening for later.
7. Once I am done with the RAW file I will open the image which sends it to the editor in Photoshop Elements. If I have been editing the RAW file in 16bit mode, I will need to convert the image to 8bit before adding adjustment layers and saving for printing later. Typically I will convert the image to the Adobe 1998 color space and then convert it to 8bit. This is one of the steps I have not read enough to know if there is a better way, but I am concerned with saving as much color information as possible and the Adobe 1998 color space holds a lot more information that sRGB which is the default for most jpeg files. I also use a photo printing service which accepts the Adobe 1998 color space.
8. After I have converted the image to 8bit, I will usually crop to the size I know I need to print at. I may crop at a later time if I don’t have printing in mind or don’t want to be limited to one aspect ratio. Most people order prints from me in the 5×7 format, but I also get a few orders for 8x10s. Either format can be further cropped into the aspect ratio of the other without losing too much border space.
9. At this point I will either make local changes or save the image as a jpeg to be printed later. If the image needs local adjustments I will most commonly use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and change the blending mode accordingly to Screen (lighten) or Multiply (darken).
10. Other local changes include cloning out distracting elements in the photo (parked cars, branches, etc.) and applying filters which most commonly includes a selective Gaussian Blur to bring focus to the subject.
11. Once I am satisfied I will save the image as a jpeg and include the color space. I use the Baseline format and the Maximum quality settings. I can then send the saved image to my printing service or upload my photos to my flickr account.

Hopefully if you’ve read this far you have picked up some new ideas for your own digital workflow, or you can give me some tips for improving mine.

With flickr allowing 90 second “long photos” I decided to try to summarize the drive to Santa Clarita in one shot. It wasn’t easy condensing 5 hours and 332 miles into 90 seconds, but I even managed to get a dust devil in the footage… er I mean frame.

English Mountain Panorama

Originally uploaded by tell-taleheart

I have rediscovered the joy of panoramas with Photoshop Elements 6. Before I used to use the Canon stitch utility which processed photos alright, but it often left overlap areas that were fuzzy or smudged. Photoshop Elements 6 even blends the images to give you an even exposure. Plus with Photoshop you can apply adjustment layers before saving. So I’ve put up some older stitched panoramas with a new feel to them.

It seems I have become a Photoshop fan overnight. I took this macro shot with my Canon G9 and bracketed it to have a darker background image to work with. I gave the background layer a radial blur and the whole image a hue adjustment (obviously).