My in-studio portrait workflow:
Before Client Arrives
- Open Capture One Pro; start a new session (e.g. "Miss U of M Headshots")
- Tether a Phase One or Leaf Back to Capture One.
- If it's a high-volume shoot without expectation of printing beyond 16x20 I'll select "Sensor+" which for an IQ180 is a 20mp raw file with base ISO of 200 (faster to shoot, faster strobe recycle, faster raw editing/processing). If it's a max-quality kind of shoot I'll leave camera at full resolution.
- Turn on iPad and launch Capture Pilot. In Capture One I select to share "3+ star images" with the iPad.
With Client There
- Create a new Capture Folder (I have a keyboard shortcut for this) for the name of the set (e.g. "Jane Doe - Blue outfit")
- While model changes I (or assistant) go through and rate the best images 3 stars.
- At end of shoot I (or assistant) hand iPad with Capture Pilot to client and ask them to tag the images they like "green" (they just touch the green square).
After Client Leaves: Editing
- In Capture One I use a smart folder that shows all "Green Tagged & 3+ Stars" images.
- I rate images I don't like anymore with 2 stars. They vanish from the smart folder.
After Client Leaves: Adjusting/Retouching
- I make all basic adjustments in Capture One including color, contrast, vignette, white balance, lens corrections, skin tone unification, and dust removal. Generally speaking if I crop at all at this stage I am very conservative.
- I select all and process using my "8 bit TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, Open in PS" recipe which results in a TIFF file for each of the final-selected-raws in the "Output" folder of the session (thereby keeping them organized alongside the folders containing the raw files of that session), and opens them all in PS (I have lots of RAM)
- For each image in PS: Duplicate the base layer, do basic retouching of blemishes/shininess/fly-aways. save-and-close images
After Client Leaves: Delivery
- Return to Capture One and view the Processed folder which now shows the retouched TIFFs.
- I Crop the images. I do this at this stage since it's much easier to match up relative head-size and decide on aspect ratios in the browser/viewer in Capture One than as individual documents in Photoshop.
- I Process simultaneously using my "Print - JPG, Max Quality, ProPhoto" and "Web - watermarked JPG, Med Quality, sRGB" (which reduces the image to fit a 800x600px vertical box and adds my logo as a watermark. These recipes are set to dump the resulting JPGs into subfolders called "Print" and "Web" in the session's "Process" folder (again, keeping them alongside the raws and full TIFFs).
- I Upload the "print" images to my Zenfolio.com account.
- I Upload the "web" images to my Website and/or Facebook and add a link to the Zenfolio page.
- I email client(s) link to my Website or Facebook Album where they can virally share the images with friends/family and any of said people can click the link to Zenfolio to order prints without me having to do any further work.
The second half of the workflow is the same for me for Weddings (the first half changes to importing CF cards on my own with a large cup of coffee in hand). For Fashion/Editorial/Fine-Art I have a recipe "Max Quality PS" (16 bit, ProPhoto, and sharpening disabled) and "Max Quality Print" (8 bit, gamut according to where I'm getting it printed) I use instead.
If Capture One had a basic healing brush and skin-shine-reducing-tool (rather than it's basic one-spot-at-a-time tool and an FTP upload tool I could do 100% of the workflow (tether-editing-adjusting-processing-retouching-delivery) from within Capture One.
Doug Peterson
(e-mail Me)
__________________
Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One Partner of the Year
Leaf, Leica, Cambo, Arca Swiss, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Broncolor, Eizo & More
National: 877.217.9870 *| *Cell: 740.707.2183
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