The key to defining workflow begins with the ability to "ruthlessly" edit your image production based on your output goals. As our bias is Web graphics with a longer term view to producing prints, we aim for fairly tight file management recognizing that at some future date we will undoubtedly return to past images as our colour sense evolves and enhancement software becomes more sophisticated. We therefore tend to reject outright images that exhibit either severe exposure issues (colours with "clipped" histogram extremes) or habitat interference (branches or grasses that obscure the subject and are far too onerous to clone out). We also find that it is best to reject really poor composition and subjects with extreme flaws (such as flight shots where the bird has severely split primaries). This is obviously not an exhaustive list and may appear somewhat purist but the objective is to reduce your files from each session to a manageable subset that is relatively simple from a tracking perspective and meets your personal creativity goals.

STEP 1 - RAW Conversion

You can now use either BreezeBrowser Pro or Camera Raw to convert the RAW files for downstream editing. If you prefer BreezeBrowser Pro for RAW file conversion, the following settings are appropriate:

Conversion Method - Normal
Smart Noise Reduction - Low
White Balance - Adjust As Required
Colour Space - AdobeRGB1998
Saturation - Low2 or As Shot (Normal)
Contrast- Low2 or As Shot (Normal)
Sharpness - Low2 or No Sharpening
Black And White Mode - Disable
Exposure Compensation - Adjust As Required

Enable Post Processing - Disable

Profile - AdobeRGB
Format - TIFF 16-Bit

If the latter, we would configure the Camera RAW template as follows:

Space: AdobeRGB(1998)
Depth: 16 Bits/Channel
Size: Camera Default With No + or - Alterations (Example From Our Mark II N Camera: 3504 By 2336 8.2 MP)
Resolution: 300 Pixels/Inch
Settings: Image Settings
White Balance: As Shot
Preview: On
Shadows: On
Highlights: On

If appropriate, you can use either program to make macro or global adjustments for Exposure, Blacks (set the white and black points) and White Balance. The rule, however, is to leave the bulk of the post processing corrections to PhotoShop. We generally do not adjust White Balance but often get good results by selecting a Custom whitepoint by clicking the White Balance Tool on a neutral grey area (a lighter area may be overexposed and not contain any useful information). This process samples a single pixel from which the white balance is calculated. It may be necessary to try several areas to produce the result you are looking for.

Camera RAW does have some unique adjustment features (which in versions prior to CS3, in our opinion, have not produced as good a conversion result as BreezeBrowser Pro). For example, by depressing the ALT key and moving the Exposure or Blacks sliders, the screen will turn appropriately black (highlight format) or white (shadow format) and detail the image areas that require adjustment. Moving the sliders will visually demonstrate whether the damage is minor and thus worth pursuing or major and simply not worth the effort to salvage. Remember, compensation adjustments at this stage affect all pixels in the image. As such, you should rely on post conversion processing for any fine tuning. We generally make minor adjustments to Exposure and perhaps experiment with White Balance if we're trying to produce a particular effect (if the image has issues it would seem obvious to correct the biggest problem(s) first). We generally start with Exposure as this affects White Balance. Although the Exposure slider affects the entire tonal range, it's essentially a tool for setting the white point (at this stage you need to ensure diffuse highlights still have sufficient detail). If you still want to make more global adjustments in Camera RAW, it's probably best to now move the Brightness and Contrast controls to shape the overall tonality of the image and reserve the Blacks slider for later to fine tune the black point. Set Brightness first as this sets the midtones without affecting the end points of the tonal range. With the Blacks and Saturation controls, it's best to leave headroom as once the image is converted in PhotoShop you will have much finer control (we believe it's best to leave specific sharpening and saturation to PhotoShop, post conversion). Again, our advice is to make the Preview image reasonably sharpe to aid editing decisions and leave the more controllable sharpening to the converted image.

Just a quick note on CS2 functionality. Although it is light years above Elements in terms of processing power, in our opinion certain aspects of the program do not perform well, namely Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) for conversion, Bridge for management and such critical tools as the Magic Wand. The improvements to ACR in CS3 are noticeable and the Exposure, Recovery, Blacks and new Clarity sliders now appear to be delivering. Although we still prefer Breeze Systems for file download and management, we highly recommend the CS3 upgrade.

STEP 2 - Lighting Adjustments

After conversion, you can now make any final global adjustments for any lighting issues that remain using Shadows/Highlights. Most professionals use Adjustment Layers to perform Steps 3 to 6. The advantage of Layers is that it allows you to create effects or apply specific corrections while leaving the original image in tact. When you are satisfied with the result, you simply Flatten the layers to create an enhanced image. We prefer to use the Image Adjustments menu as we're primarily producing Web Graphics which is a much less demanding environment than print. As such, we tend to move through the enhancement steps quickly, addressing only the most serious image issues. If we're undertaking more complex adjustments, we use Adjustment Layers as mistakes downstream obviously mean having to start over. Your choice.

STEP 3 - Dust Spotting And Cloning

It is now a matter of removing those annoying little gremlins that inevitably cling to the camera sensor. We use the new Spot Healing tool and prefer the Hand Tool using a partial zoom to cover and inspect the affected areas. We also clone out any distractions to the central image at this time as we hate to get through the remaining steps and find that it is difficult to create a pleasing image if the cloning step has created a distortion that is difficult to correct.

STEP 4 - Tonal Adjustments

By further optimizing exposure you can reveal hidden detail and emphasize texture in key areas by using the Levels or Curves tools. Adjusting the black and white end-point sliders produces contrast and the mid-point equivalent generates brightness. We often find using the Auto feature of either tool produces the best result.

STEP 5 - Colour Adjustments

When making colour adjustments, we generally use the Hue/Saturation tool. The Colour Balance functionality provided for the shadow, midtone and highlight areas allows you to make targeted adjustments. We have found the Selective Colour settings for Neutral and Black to be of tremendous help in producing sharp Web Graphics. As mentioned above, we leave the Master image in tact, prefering to sharpen and crop to produce alternative output of the same image.

STEP 6 - Crop, Size And Sharpen

We now copy an image from the Master to the Output file for final disposition. We generally crop according to the particular task at hand. If we've used Adjustment Layers, we Flatten and perform targeted Sharpening. If the image subject has a prominent eye, we will zoom and use the Lasso Tool to isolate, make any tonal or colour adjustments necessary and use Unsharpen Mask to keynote (Amount 375, Radius 0.3 and Threshold 0 usually produce good results). Alternatively, the Sharpen Tool can be used to emphasize a prominent feature. We use the Smart Sharpen Filter to complete the final image (again, Basic mode, Default settings, Amount 58, Radius 0.6 to 1.1 with Gaussian Blur and More Accurate checked seems to produce a good result). There is no hard and fast rule for sharpening and a fair amount of trial and error is needed to create results that are not harsh or exhibit halo's. For some work, Amount 100%, Radius 0.2 and Threshold 0, applied four to seven times often produces great results. All of the above depends on your "sense of colour" and we will guaranty that your eye will improve considerably as time progresses.

STEP 7 - Add Metadata

It is at this stage that we return to Bridge and complete the Metadata schedule by adding our personal IPTC profile, copyright disclaimer and tag the image with a description and session location. This is done from a template that we created and attached to the Tools drop-down menu.

Although the above workflow process may seem logical from the perspective that it fits our current goals, we feel it recognizes that we will undoubtedly improve our editing skills over time and need to go back and revisit some images. This will inevitably lead to producing better output, particularly prints. As we have saved the original RAW file, we can return and apply new abilities and insights as they evolve. Besides, DVD and hard disks are cheap and store an immense amount of information.

STEP 8 - Archive

Whether in the field or back home, organizing and safely managing a repository of digital photographs can be a real headache due to the ever changing types of storage media (for example, CD, DVD, hard drive, flash drive, USB keys and thumb drives) and file formats (for example, JPEG, TIFF and PCD). As such, we feel the only reliable archival method is to simply adapt to obsolesence. This means employing a strategy to periodically move data from older to newer technology. We strongly suggest you add a detailed description to each image and place them chronologically in folders with a logical title and file structure. As described earlier, we tag files with a job code and date and embed each image with select Metadata that indicates the photographer, contact details, image description, key words and copywrite notice. These are placed in a folder that usually includes files from a location(s) where we have spent time and intend to create a gallery. We save the original RAW file as read-only and, if processed, place the resulting derivative in a master file in 16-bit TIFF. Because of the sheer volume of data (we can't stress enough to ruthlessly edit images after each session), we use two 500 Gbyte external hard drives to backup and mirror our images. This frees up our hard drive for storage and processing of existing jobs. We also store our very best images on DVD.

Although we feel that our Workflow is "optimized" for the in-house software and hardware tools that we have at our disposal, others may disagree. We're certainly sold on working solely in RAW format. If you take the time to join and follow some of the more interesting forums such as PhotoNet you will soon see that there is a fair amount of disagreement on many of the above issues. It doesn't take much to start a bun fight and the arguments get pretty heated and down right technical. Notwithstanding, we feel the above process produces great results and will certainly change rapidly as hardware and software technology advances.