Processing an image after it is shot

Hi Everyone,

I want to ask the forum a simple quick question: What does a professional photographer do after he shots a picture. What are the steps that he or she takes to convert the original image to the final product (adjusting contrast, WB, color, sharpenning, etc). If possible, please take me throught the life of a digital picture before it is considered final.

Thanks,

Sedali

Ah, the eternal question :)
I wish there were an all-encompassing answer for this. Unfortunately, each image and each photographer is very different. They all require different treatment and have different goals in mind. A portrait shot would have entirely different sharpening and color treatment than a landscape or product shot, for example. I could create an exhausting list of "if A then B", statements to follow, but I think this could detract from the fun of it all by trying to make photographic post-processing into a strict step by step system. I want to resist that. There are certainly some isolated portions of image processing that can be made more systematic, such as image enlargement or sharpening, but I think those are all best discussed in separate treatments.

Yeah, I have similar problems. I recently changed from shooting Raw plus jpg to shooting Raw only. This is working out much better in terms of DAM organization. I make any value adjustments in ACR and click Done. If desired, Image Processor to jpgs. What I find troublesome is getting other family members to see the pics. Most are not computer literate (like me; well almost). Some don't have PDF Reader, others it's the pc, and still others it's the internet connection. I need to get pics in a slideshow and burn to a DVD. They'll see a nice show popping it into their player and watching it on their TV. It's frustrating how complex it is...it shouldn't be though. It's even difficult to get pics printed, but I'm doing better in that regard. I know I could upload them to a photo sharing site and that would solve some problems of sharing and even printing, but I want (need) to get the slideshow on the road.

Chrlz on Tiger/Adobe

Photoshop Elements (apparently - according to the Help on a copy I've got) saves slideshows as WMV files - presumably something similiar on a Mac. You can add music and fades and stuff too (apparently) - from there I'm sure there's something to easily burn WMV to DVD. Elements is pretty inexpensive - freely bundled with some peripherals in fact. I got my nth free copy with a Wacom tablet. Never actually tried doing this myself but it looks feasible and quite straightforward - you'll have to go RAW->jpg first but if you're doing that anyway ....

Elements, Bridge in CS3 (don't see any slideshow saving in Menu or Help), or Mac2007 Power Point will not create the slideshow I want. The closest I've come is using iMovie, but it is time consuming. I think creating a SS in PDF and saving to a DVD might work too, but I'm unclear how to go about that. I may purchase a speciality product if I could find one for my iMac; Apimac comes close, but iMovie seems to be my best bet for now unless someone makes a different recommendation. Adobe has not replied to a query regarding their Slideshow Pro/Flash???

Chrlz

Hello Chrlz,

There is a way to create a slideshow as a PDF from the Bridge in CS2 & 3. Put you're selected images in a seperate folder in the order you wish them to be displayed. Go to Tools-Photoshop-PDF Presentation. This will then open photoshop with a dialogue box; follow the instructions. This advice is from a friend of mine who is a wedding photographer. She didn't tell me if it was possible to add music & stuff. Hope this helps anyway.

Mark