Photography Work Flow Questions

[hendon]

Sorry about the long post, but sometimes I think too much!

So far my photography work flow has been a bit hit and miss, so I want to streamline it a bit and make it not so complicated or frustrating. So I've been reading Scott Kelbys Digital Photography books and his PSE8 book to get ideas, but admit to feeling a bit confused and overwhelmed still.

This is what I've come up with that I'm pretty happy with and makes sense to me:

1. Upload photos from camera to computer [program used not important - still shoot jpegs].
2. Choose photos to keep or delete.
3. Rename keepers by date, add keywords, descriptions, etc
4. In PSE/LR (if necessary): Resize photos -- Remove spots, etc. -- Adjust colour, contrast, etc, etc. -- Red eye removal, crop, etc, etc. -- Sharpen photo [always final thing].

But I do have some questions:

1. Am I on the right track? Does this work flow cover pretty much all I need to do, and have I got the order of events right?

2. Does anyone else resize their photos? Mostly my photos are used for scrapbooking, but there will be photos that I want to print, mostly for albums, some larger for wall displays. Or is this something to do at the time of printing?
Scott Kelby seems to be talking about getting the ppi up [my camera shoots at 300ppi] and photo size down [mine seem to be appr. 13x8 or so], all to get sharpest resolution. Do you resize, and if so to what, and why?

3. Sharpening/Unsharpening/Defogging - arrrgh! I've read a few older posts here where people are using some/all/both ... so that doesn't help me.
Scott Kelby talks about sharpening your photo as the final thing you do. He says all professional photographers do it, even if their photos are already good. I think he is talking about using EITHER the 'unsharp mask' OR his preferred option of 'adjust sharpness' [I have his settings for both].
So am I understanding this right? I have never sharpened or defogged photos, but after playing around on the weekend can see it's merits. Is it a matter of either/or - ie use 'unsharp mask' or 'adjust sharpness'. Is one or the other all I need to use to accomplish a more defogged, sharper looking image?

Any help, opinions, insights, would be much much appreciated, as the more I think about this the more my poor little brain gets frazzled.

[JulieSade]

I work with a Canon SX210 IS (it's a compact camera with a long lens). But, with any camera I've dealt with that takes JPEGs, you don't need to resize to print. When you download your images onto a print site, like Pernickety or Shutterfly or Snapfish, they resize the photograph for you.

Also, there should be setting on your camera somewhere on the main menu where you can have the camera label all photographs by date, and then you can tell it what order you want the date (ie, year/day/month, year/month/day, etc). You're dealing with a DSLR, however, so I don't know much about them, but if it's a Nikon, that should be programmable right in the camera. Every camera I've ever used has let you have the option of dating the image files by daily date, or monthly date, and it groups those images accordingly during download. I do go through my newly downloaded files briefly even with the dates and add a short pertinent description like, "Son's 6th birthday; Daughter and friends at pool; Fourth of July cookout" and things like that.

As for sharpening the photos, I can't help you there. There are threads here that deal with that (and I asked about it, too) that have some good advice about it. You CAN oversharpen an image.

Anyways, I hope more folks answer, esp ones with your model camera. But as I said, I really don't think you need to resize your images after you download.

[esther_a]

I do steps 1-3.
Step 4 I only do when I scrap or share the photos. I think it would be a pain to process them all. But I do know photographers that do. And they make it efficient by processing multiple photos at once (eg in Lightroom you can copy the adjustments on one photo and apply to many).
I keep the originals and save any edited versions as a copy. I usually correct the color and light balance. Often I duplicate the photo layer twice, one in screen mode and the other in soft light mode. This improves the contrast of the photo. There was a discussion about this here about 3 years ago!
I use the unsharp mask rather than sharpen because it has more controls. I always zoom in on a small area with detail - like an eye - and I check that I'm not oversharpening and creating a halo effect or accentuating any noise in the photo.

For more control again I sharpen this way:

• make a copy of the photo layer,
• convert to black and white,
• run the Filter - Other - High Pass,
• change the blend mode to overlay.

That way if I only want certain areas sharpened I can erase the other parts of the overlay layer. I can duplicate the overlay layer for more intense sharpening.

But that all takes time. It would take me forever to do that to ALL of my photos! The originals are always there if I want to edit them.

[tylertooo]

I'm with Esther. I pretty much do the same thing - never knew anyone else did the filter/high pass for sharpening - so I guess I am not doing it wrong. I use actions for as much as I can to make things quicker. Can you make and use actions in Elements? The actions save me a great deal of time.

I name my photos differently, however, but it's just my (weird) preference. I name with my InitialsYearMonthDay_photo #. I don't tag the photo - I place photos in dated directories with descriptions as part of the folder name. Beyond that, I figure I can go into the directory to view the images to pull the one I want. This way the renumbering can be done by a file renaming program, and I am not having to break down who was in what photo, etc. That's just my personal preference, and I doubt anyone does it that way.

I use to spend hours going through each photo to get it to the printable stage. I also use to print all my good shots, and keep them handy for scrapping. Now that I scrap digitally, I don't print or size anything unless they are for someone else. The ones I choose to scrap get the works, except I still don't straighten or size or crop, etc., as I am always using a clipping mask - I correct the photo, and then import into my scrapbook page, and go from there. It is interesting to hear what others do.