Developing a photographic workflow (RAW workflow)

RAW Workflow

RAW workflow can be simple the raw workflow is good when a photographer wants to create a small to medium side image, with good quality. Two of the most commonly used tools for raw workflow is camera raw for the raw converter and Photoshop, as the image editing software.

General workflow

After setting camera settings in order to take a raw photograph then, after opening a raw file in Photoshop the basic raw workflow can begin involving these key areas 

-         Exposure

-         Colour

-         Black and white paint

-         Contrast

-         Saturation

-         Interpolation

-         Sharpening

-         Colour settings

-         Camera raw

-         View proof point

However exposure and colour can be set in raw converter all the other edited settings are done in Photoshop.

Depth and colour space if the image is being prepared for printing the picture needs converting into RGB colour setting to Adobe RGB to create great quality pictures.

Colour setting – Camera raw –viewpoint proof print – editing – print settings-final print

The preserving and file raw workflow is simple through Photoshop, edit –preferences- camera raw then in the camera raw preferences dialog box camera raw database saves and stores the settings , raw data base in the folder, the file contains indexed file content so remains with camera row settings.   

For my editing section when looking at the original picture i could see that it needed to be brighter while making the shadows a lot lighter and not as heavy to which was darkening the picture, also making the contrast a lot smoother and leaving the saturation as it is .

Exposure- +0.68

Shadows- 10

Contrast- +69

Saturation- +67

Brightness- +67

Original photo

End photo

Different RAW workflows



Workflows in light room -

Once the photos have been taken any colour correction along with the exposure tweaking or convert to black and white can be done, if the photographer prefers to do this, any cropping at this stage the vast amount of manipulation happens to the raw file before. After the photos have been edited light room will take each individual image in turn and be saved as either JPEG OR TIFF also noise ninja can be done a noise reduction package filtering out areas of noise then simply re exporting the shots from light room.



Other workflows that can be done in bridge or Photoshop for example my workflow was done in Photoshop, and bridge workflow is pretty much exactly the as the Photoshop one as you can access bridge through Photoshop.



what makes a raw workflow is of course photographs and then convert to raw files and then at this stage through software such as Photoshop you can edit the pictures and make the altercations which need and also can change the size of the photograph and also the file type which is commonly changed to TIFF which is a lot easier for photographers when printing the files.





Changes that need and can be made to my personal workflow having looked at points 1 and 2 from the worksheet is that my current method of backing up my work could be better, after looking at the process using light room and how once taken the photos and put the shots onto the computer the files should be backed up onto a DVD twice therefore you can also go back to your original photographs. This would really benefit me as often i loose files and delete files by accident on my computer however if the photographs have been put onto the DVDs this makes it completely separate from my computer and i can simply put the DVDs away and not worry about them unless needs be later on. Furthermore i need to make some changed to my personal resources by downloading light room as the process of creating a raw workflow seems a lot better certain aspects for example when converting several files this is a lot easier in light room , and being able to work several files at once however i do prefer to still do my editing in Photoshop but this is just a personal preference.





Workflow for one of projects –



For the restoring a old photograph task there is key steps during the process .The first step is scanning the picture onto the computer then i started editing the picture using such tools as dust removal, auto colour and auto contrast and after resizing the image to fit the size i wanted i was then done and ready to print if i wished so therefore the workflow was also done.



File organization –

As I looked into earlier when researching different software workflows light room is really good at organising files and photos part of the process being after and before doing the photographs to download them onto discs then safely store them away until needed also labelling them with date and size and name of where they are going to.





Question for reflection – some of the implications for raw capture in my personal practice is good if I’m doing work that involves lots of editing but not if the work that im doing does not involve a lot post processing, furthermore raw will take up a lot more memory space.