My workflow - what do you suggest?

teddyt72

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Name
Eddie
Edit My Images
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Hi all,

I'm sorry if there has been a similar thread but I've not easily been able to find what I'm looking for. I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction if I'm repeating previous threads!

So I've recently got my camera out again after a little while of inactivity and having broken my laptop in that time I now have no editing software (was previously on PSE 8). I've downloaded a trial of PSE 10 for now but I think I might need to change my processing workflow as it feels clunky and poorly organised.

Me as a photographer (I imagine this will help). I probably get out with my cameara a handful of times a month (3-4 maybe) and take 500 or so photos (depending on what I'm shooting obviously) I live in London so mainly shoot street stuff, cityscapes etc. Most outings I get 50 or so decent photos. I'm starting to get to the stage where I need to start binning ones I don't keep, but I haven't been very good about that so far, I tend to just accumulate a lot of RAW files i'll never use!

My workflow would currently look like this

- Download from camera and create a new folder within PS elements (check that)
- go through and mark the ones I like with a star
- Edit these, usually one at a time (very basic editing, exposure, saturation, white balance etc, straighten, crop etc.) and then export to jpg if I'm posting them somewhere.
- That's pretty much it!

I've recently come across lightroom and I wonder if since I don't do much in the way of post processing (and don't have much desire to get into things like selective colouring, crazy effects like HDR etc - I like to keep it pure, for now anyway) I'd be better off with something like lightroom that would allow me to simply process the raw images more efficiently, better organise them (including getting rid of junk!) and post to flickr etc.

Would you agree? Is there anything else I should think about? I'm going to either buy my trial version of elements (£70 quid ish) or get lightroom (£139 from kerso - bargain!)

Many thanks,
Eddie.
 
Lightroom 3 seems to be pretty much the main package for someone who just wants to process and organise their raws but without wanting to get into advanced "tinkering" with their shots.

If I did not shoot Nikon (I use their own ViewNX2/CaptureNX2) then I'd almost certainly get LR3.
 
Thanks Adrian.

Anyone else got any thoughts on LR3? Do most people use this as their raw converter/ workflow tool? Is there anything else I should consider?
 
I cannot recommend lightroom 3 enough, I used to use photoshop CS2, but have maybe used it twice in the last 18 months as lightroom does everything I need.. It organises images really well and when you go through your images you can hit x for reject and then delete all rejected at any time, download a trial and have a play. look at abode TV for tutorials as its tricky at first.. great for quick tweaking of images and then you can just sync those settings to all images if you want to really speed things up..
 
Thanks technics - I will download the trial now!!
 
Well, just to say I got the LR3 trial & bought the Scott Kelby book and after several hours working through I am truly a convert to Lightroom. Great bit of kit!!

Cheers folks.
 
P.s. why would anyone ever bother with elements when you've got LR?!
 
teddyt72 said:
P.s. why would anyone ever bother with elements when you've got LR?!

You can't do layers in Lightroom.

To be fair I hardly ever use elements for photography stuff, it's more if I'm adding text etc.
 
True. But aren't they more expensive than buying Elements?
 
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