Digital Photography Workflow Part 3 (Output)

The next stage in my image processing workflow is to output to my chosen media. the actual process depends on my intended target.

Web Site
I often display my work on websites like Ephotozine to get feedback on my work. To prepare for a web page I do the following in Photoshop.

• Add a border.
• Select Image>Mode and convert to 8bits per channel.
• Use Image>Image Size to reduce the size of the so that maximum height is 800 pixels and the maximum width is 1000 pixels. I ensure that bicubic sharper is selected.
• Then I convert to SRGB using Edit>Convert to profile.
• Finally I add an unsharp mask of around 40%, 1 pixel threshold 1.
• use Save For Web to reduce the final image size to around 200K.

All of this has been recorded as an action in Photoshop so it is actually a matter of clicking and waiting for a few seconds.

My Web Galleries
I will cover part 4 of my workflow (archiving) soon but for the moment trust me when I say it relies on iView Media Pro quite heavily. My web galleries are generated directly from iView.

A catalogue set for the gallery is created and all items selected for the gallery are added to it. Each picture has the comments updated and a title added. The Gallery is then generated and uploaded through Dreamweaver.

Print
For Print output the image is resized to the required output size at 300dpi with bicubic-smoother selected. I then use the professional sharpening toolkit from The Lights Right Studio to sharpen the image with specific settings for ink-jet at 300DPI on matte paper.

Finally the prints are produced on an Epson 2100 printer on to Epson archival matte paper using genuine Epson inks. Prints are left to dry for 24 hours then checked and signed in pencil and mounted using acid free mountboard.

Part 4 covers the final part of the workflow - Archival.


My Workflow

• Capture
• Processing
• Output
• Archiving