Well, tonight I'm in work, and while I've been quiet here I have been working on altering/enhancing my digital photography workflow.

What do other do? Do you use Lightroom and do it all there?  Do you use Bridge/Photoshop and alter each image bit by bit? Do you use Photoshop to build actions and droplets?

Tonight I've been going through the Guy Gowan (etntworld.com) Workflow DVD. The guy is just brilliant. He makes everything seem just so simple and logical. You spend hours in each image, moving sliders all over the place to try and get a good image. By his method - you use a few small actions, using selections and colour channels, and using set values. WOW - what have I been doing all this time?

Earlier this year a group of us online arranged a private tutorial session with Guy. He went through most of his Workflow process and even some of his Cosmetic Techniques. For a lot of the tutorial, we sat there with our mouths open. How simple is all this?? A few simple actions and your images pop.

Now I know that many of my images still don't quite have that punch. Tonight I have seen why. I am just not using the correct channel many times. But, it also means that I can now go back and do it again. His process may create very large PSD files, but it's all non-destructive and you can go back again.

Anyway ... enough of my rambles - how do you process your digital files? 

1. Download images from CF card using Downloader Pro
2. Use Faststone Image Viewer to do an initial cull of the non-keepers and then copy the specific images I want to convert from raw to my working folder.
3. Backup the keepers to DVD and an external HDD. Once that's done, I can safely return my CF cards to the camera bag.
4. Use DPP to batch process my selected raw images in my working folder to JPEG (and 16-bit TIFF if necessary).
5. At this stage I'm usually finished but am starting to use Photoshop more for some additional image enhancements such as defogging (local contrast enhancement), adding a vignette, watermarking and resizing.
6. Have also started using Photoshop more for creative aspects such as mono conversions and duotones.
   

The quicker I can get things done the better, and shooting raw with the workflow I've outlines above I can have a preview web-gallery online within an hour of downloading the images from the cards (depends on how many images there are).

That's also why I use the tools I mentioned above. Downloader Pro creates my preferred folder structure on the fly as it's downloading the images from the card and also renames the images to my preferred naming convention. FastStone Image Viewer is the fastest (raw) image viwer I have ever used and has a useful magnify function which allows me to instantly zoom in for critical analysis. DPP came free with my camera and to my eyes at least, produces the best conversions from raw images.

As for Guy Gowan, well IMHO I think he is over-rated. I really don't like his "unless you do it my way your doing it wrong" arrogance and I think his seminars are nothing more than a sales vehicle for his tutorial DVD's. If you shoot it right in the camera, there's really no need to go near photoshop at all except for creative expression and enhancements, but I think using it as a corrective tool is simply a waste of time. For eample, instead of spending 30-60 seconds cloning out a bit of rubbish from an image it would have been quicker and easier to remove it from the shot before releasing the shutter

To keep file sizes small I usually shoot in jpeg mode and edit the pictures in an old version of Paintshop Pro (ver 7.4), which I find quicker to use and just as capable as photoshop for basic curves adjustments etc.

If I'm in difficult lighting I switch to shooting in raw mode. In this case then I normally convert the pictures using the built-in Photoshop converter. Sometimes I also use DPP to do the conversion.

Almost all pictures will benefit from some basic levels/curves adjustment, but I try to keep further editing to a minimum. Otherwise, when I'm done and compare the edited picture to the original, the original nearly always looks better!