Camera Labs

So I finally opted for the Panasonic G1 after much deliberation - and I'm loving it! As someone inexperienced but keen to develop their interest in photography, I'm shooting in raw and post-processing in Elements 6 + ACR. I'm trying to develop a workflow that is as efficient for me as possible. At present I'm post-processing my raw images in ACR and then saving them as .DNG files - and saving the raw files in their unmodified state. This way I have an original raw file and a final version saved in the widely recognised .DNG format.

I can't help but wonder if there are other, better ways of doing this. For example once edited should I save files as .DNG or would it be better to use a non-proprietary format such as TIFF? Does it matter? I'm keen to save my edited work in lossless recognized formats not likely to be made redundant over the course of time. Any advice for me, please?

Many thanks in advance........

I tend to treat RAW/DNG files as I would treat negatives. There isn't really that much editing to do as I try to get everything as right as possible at capture. Since most of the edits I do can be done in a RAW converter there is no need to export the images a TIFF or JPEG.

I organize my photos in folders named using the following format YYYY-MM-DD. Most of these folders contain RAW files. The keepers that I feel like sharing or distributing, I convert into JPEGs after the post processing steps are done. These files are then stored in the same folder where the original RAW was located, in a subfolder called "converted". So it would look something like YYYY-MM-DD/converted.

That seems to work really well for the 10k+ RAW files I have in my collection. As most of my editing is limited to tweaks in the RAW editor, there is no need to export my work into a different format since the parameters used to process RAW files are stored separately.

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PhilipGoh.com

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of having "converted" sub-folders - I might try that myself. At present I just have the raw+.DNG files side by side within each folder, which means staring at pairs of images all the time. I didn't think there was any reason to automatically convert each of my raw/.DNG files to more distributable formats unless I specifically wanted to send particular files on to others - good to know I'm not missing something here!

Unless you want to print your photos, or post them on the web, you don't actually need to save your photos as jpegs/tiffs/dngs/whatever. I'm not sure about Panasonic RAW formats, but Canon, Nikon, Sony and I think Pentax offer a driver for your RAW files that lets your OS display them as thumbnails, as well as letting you view them in your picture viewer, just as you would a JPEG/TIFF. I just got one yesterday for my a200's .ARW files. chances are, Panasonic offer a similar thing. just seach for "[raw format] thumbnails [OS]" of course, any photos you want to put on the web or (I think) print you'll have to convert to JPEG or TIFF.

If you're doing any edits that are not supported by your RAW editor, you'll need to save in a format like TIFF or JPEG. There's a very limited amount you can do in most RAW editors.

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PhilipGoh.com

Limited maybe, but unique to raw editing. The OP asked if he should save as tiff or some other lossless common format instead of proprietary DNG. That would be unwise as there are edits you can do to DNG files (in a raw editor) that you can't do with non-raw formats.

I would even question the need to convert the original raw files to DNG at all, that is, until it becomes necessary to do so (ie when you no longer have a raw editor which can open your camera raw files). As long as you have a copy of Adobe's DNG Converter you can convert them then.

Carry on processing your camera's native raw files while ever it's possible to do so, convert them to tiff for further editing in a non-raw editor. If you do insist on converting them to DNG as a future-proofing measure, don't delete the original camera raw files! They are the the only "true" originals you have.

I import using Adobe Bridge and leave the blurry and obviously bad photos on the card. I import the good photos to the desktop, in a folder such as "20090101" (Jan 1, 2009). Bridge creates the dated folder for me.

Now I go in and post process the pictures I want, export them as a JPEG and upload to flickr, or whatever. Then I delete the jpegs.

I then rename the folder to read easier, 2009-01-01. I put that folder into my archive and then backup my archive on another hard drive so I have 2 copies.

Then I take the card out of the reader, put it back in the camera and format the card from inside the camera. Note that I do this step last, after I know I have a backup of the RAW files.

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