Workflow advice/suggestions for someone who's got only experience with Photoshop

[VTech]

Hi all,

I need some workflow advice and or suggestions.
I'm an early Photoshop user, and never used anything else (no lightroom).
There's a bit of rambling in there, I tried to keep it short and highlighted the important parts.


My current workflow consists of the following.

1. Copy files from card to computer or external workdrive (+ double back up drives)
2. Finder folder structure
3. Preview photos and write down the filenames of my selection. Sometimes I tag my selection in a color afterwards (in finder)
4. Open photo in photoshop. Starting with one of my presets or a custom base in Adobe Camera Raw. (A big part, sometimes the whole grade, is done in the Adobe Camera Raw section)
5. Further adjust in photoshop with adjustment layers (not always), make an export of the uncleaned version in jpeg
6. Clean if necessary and sometimes more adjustments
7. Make export of cleaned version in jpeg and export jpeg(s) of crop(s) in certain aspect ratio

Why don't I use lighroom?
What I find hard to grasp is the library system. I tried a few versions years ago and didn't understand it at all.
It made a copy of my photo's doubling the amount of space it took, also I think the files were not easily accessible through finder on mac os.
Now that I use a Fuji often, lightroom would not be the best program to use. (I saw a big difference on youtube between Lightroom and Capture one.)

Why I'm looking for a different workflow?
I use a Fuji camera often recently (for about a year), and finally found out it was adobe that produced these funky looking results.

I also want to speed up my workflow, spend less time on the computer...
It's the part that I don't like doing, but spend the most time on.

Type of photography I do.
Product & food photography both in studio and on location
Portrait work mostly music orientated, sometimes fashion
Also documentary and commercial documentary

A big part is professional, however up until now small scale. (for if you were wondering how I get away with not shooting tethered)
I do want to up the scale though, and I can see shooting tethered has a lot of advantages.

Altough I always did a bit of both film and photography, my background is most in film.
With that being said, I rarely edit, but have used Davinci Resolve a couple of times recently.
I'm amazed at how good it has become. It's really an all in one solution.
So if there is anything like Davinci Resolve but orientated towards photography, let me know!

The options that I came across browsing the web.
Lightroom, Capture One, Affinity, Phocus, Darktable, Photoshop


What I'm currently thinking of doing.

Capture One Express in combination with Photoshop (open Fuji in Capture One Express, further adjust in Photoshop) = probably just as slow?

OR

Capture One Pro



Of course I need to try out things.
But maybe you have better suggestions?

Questions around Capture One
Is the file management the same like in Lightroom? Will it copy my files, doubling the amount of space needed?
Can you easily use an external work drive? Will it act funky if you have one of your external workdrives unplugged and want to work on files from your local drive or different external work drive?
In photoshop I use adjustment layers often with masks and using the opacity of the adjustment layer quite a lot. I also often clean photo's using one of the cleaning tools and the mixer brush.
Removing small objects or extending backgrounds is also a thing that I sometimes have to do.
Will Capture One Pro be sufficient for all of this? Or 90% of this?

Questions around Affinity
How is Affinity from a professionals perspective? What software did you use before? Do you use it for cleaning etc?

Comment on Darktable
Darktable seems not very polished. It's probably very capable but seems more for programmers. It looks like you don't have to import files, and rather just point to them where they are located. I like that, but maybe it's because I haven't used a good library yet.

Comment on Phocus
Phocus seems nice, but is only for Hasselblad files and camera.

 

[pegelli]

Why don't I use lighroom?
What I find hard to grasp is the library system. I tried a few versions years ago and didn't understand it at all.
It made a copy of my photo's doubling the amount of space it took, also I think the files were not easily accessible through finder on mac os.
Now that I use a Fuji often, lightroom would not be the best program to use. (I saw a big difference on youtube between Lightroom and Capture one.)

The Lightroom catalog is not that different from C1, and you clearly did something wrong when importing from your hard drive to Lightroom, you can import straight from your folder into Lightroom (or C1) without copying/doubling your files. Also since the originals stay in the same place they're just as easy to find as before their import to LR/C1. In the latest versions of Lightroom you can even keep working on previously imported files that are stored on an external harddrive, even whan that hard drive is disconnected. I don't know if C1 has the same possibility. When the hard drive is reconnected all settings are automatically synchronised.

The big difference between Lightroom/C1 and Photoshop is that LR/C1 is not a pixel editor but a command editor. LR/C1 store all the settings you change in a photo (all the slider settings and other adjustments) without touching the original. So to see an edited version of your file you first need to export it from LR/C1 (as tifff, jpg or other format) since before that there is no separate file with all the changes you made. Only the original file and a set of commands from LR/C1.

So the best advice I can give you is read the manual and study the import process (eg. watch some good youtubes on the subject) of whichever you are going to use since without that you might very well step into the same trap as you did in Lightroom in the past which created your aversion. Also understnding how LR/C1 is fundamentally different from Photoshop is important to work out your optimum workflow.

 

[archiM44]

Here you can find a wealth of information without having to have an account

Capture One Learning Hub - Free tutorials, webinars and blog posts

The official Capture One Learning Hub. Free access to quick tutorials, in-depth webinars, and blog posts. Learn Capture One today!

learn.captureone.com

Amongst all the Webinars and tutorials available here are two, one about sessions and the other about catalogs which have many answers to your questions.
At the above website the are webinars which are long but also short tutorials which often answer a question rapidly and to the point.
With reference to your questions about Capture One Pro
Is the file management the same like in Lightroom? Will it copy my files, doubling the amount of space needed? It only copies the file when you ask it to edit or open in an other application such as Photoshop etc as it then sends a Tiff and not the RAW file for editing.
Can you easily use an external work drive? Will it act funky if you have one of your external workdrives unplugged and want to work on files from your local drive or different external work drive? Yes. All my images reside on an external Hard drive and structured by Main Subject/sub subjects and each of these by date. Total images about 50.000.
both Capture One Catalog and Lightroom catalogs have and use this and respect the structure. I can export a RAF In the format I want(jpeg or tiff or whatever with the desired profile} from Capture one to any folder on the external drive, then synchronize that folder in the LR catalog and import the image as corrected in Capture one looking exactly as in Capture One.
In photoshop I use adjustment layers often with masks and using the opacity of the adjustment layer quite a lot. I also often clean photo's using one of the cleaning tools and the mixer brush.
Removing small objects or extending backgrounds is also a thing that I sometimes have to do.
Will Capture One Pro be sufficient for all of this? Or 90% of this?
In Capture One different layers are available including Heal Layers, Cloning Layers, different sorts of masking laters and so on. If I ever encounter something I can't do in Capture One I can send it for editing in Photoshop.
A free trial of Capture One Pro is always available.

 

[MGrayson]

The Lightroom catalog is not that different from C1, and you clearly did something wrong when importing from your hard drive to Lightroom, you can import straight from your folder into Lightroom (or C1) without copying/doubling your files. Also since the originals stay in the same place they're just as easy to find as before their import to LR/C1. In the latest versions of Lightroom you can even keep working on previously imported files that are stored on an external harddrive, even whan that hard drive is disconnected. I don't know if C1 has the same possibility. When the hard drive is reconnected all settings are automatically synchronised.

The big difference between Lightroom/C1 and Photoshop is that LR/C1 is not a pixel editor but a command editor. LR/C1 store all the settings you change in a photo (all the slider settings and other adjustments) without touching the original. So to see an edited version of your file you first need to export it from LR/C1 (as tifff, jpg or other format) since before that there is no separate file with all the changes you made. Only the original file and a set of commands from LR/C1.

So the best advice I can give you is read the manual and study the import process (eg. watch some good youtubes on the subject) of whichever you are going to use since without that you might very well step into the same trap as you did in Lightroom in the past which created your aversion. Also understnding how LR/C1 is fundamentally different from Photoshop is important to work out your optimum workflow.

PS can be used non-destructively simply by duplicating the base layer. Its only use of pixels is in the masking, which is the same with LR. That being said, it is a VERY different program with next to no DAM.

But for Content Aware FIll, nothing (that I'm aware of) comes close to PS.

 

[archiM44]

Two Webinars of interest

 

[pegelli]

PS can be used non-destructively simply by duplicating the base layer. Its only use of pixels is in the masking, which is the same with LR. That being said, it is a VERY different program with next to no DAM.

I fully agree that PS can be used non-destructively (with the emphasis on 'can') but you have to keep all the layers which is blowing up your file size and the OP was already worried about doubling the space he needed because somehow he used an 'unwanted/unneeded' import setting in LR that made copies of all the files he imported. Only duplicating the base layer roughly doubles the file size and that's before adding any more layers that might be needed for editing. Storing the commands from LR or C1 takes up much less space (in the sidecars and/or catalog files) but indeed you can't do everything in there, so at some point you might still need to do the final touches in Photoshop, with content aware fill just being one of the very many things people might need from there

 

[MGrayson]

I fully agree that PS can be used non-destructively (with the emphasis on 'can') but you have to keep all the layers which is blowing up your file size and the OP was already worried about doubling the space he needed because somehow he used an 'unwanted/unneeded' import setting in LR that made copies of all the files he imported. Only duplicating the base layer roughly doubles the file size and that's before adding any more layers that might be needed for editing. Storing the commands from LR or C1 takes up much less space (in the sidecars and/or catalog files) but indeed you can't do everything in there, so at some point you might still need to do the final touches in Photoshop, with content aware fill just being one of the very many things people might need from there

I'm splitting hairs here, but there's filling up your drive with large files and filling up your drive with duplicate files. The former just needs a larger drive. The latter is a nightmare. Note: I am NOT advocating PS as a major workflow center. Even the hardest core PS users I know are using LR for basic file management and I/O.

 

[VTech]

Hi all,

thanks for the replies!
I'm testing out Capture One Pro at the moment.

I wasn't saying that PS is the same as Lightroom or Capture One.
Otherwise I wouldn't have started this topic. (But since a program like Davinci Resolve exists, it's not crazy to think an all in one solution exists)

What I did wonder however if Capture One would be able to replace it for my needs. Or do 90% of the things I do in PS.
As up until now, I only used photoshop.

I also came across DxO PhotoLab.
Anybody who has tried DxO PhotoLab and/or Affinity? Anybody who uses one of those professionally? How does it compare to the other programs?

 

[Godfrey]

Affinity Photo is a simpler version of Photoshop with different command/control choices. It's a pixel editor, just like PS. I have it, don't use it much. If you like using PS, you should fine Affinity Photo much the same.

99% of my editing is done in Lightroom Classic nowadays. LR is a parametric editor ... once your image files are in place where you want them on your disk, it treats them as read-only and does not change them, or grow them. They are loaded into the LR catalog file by reference ... meaning that the file system address of the file is loaded, not the image data itself. The space it needs to store your edits is not in the image files, it's in the catalog, the preview, and the smart preview files that are all stored in the same folder (directory) as the catalog you're using. These do take up some space, although my experience with using LR is that the space they consume is vastly less than the multiple duplicate copies of original image files I was creating in my PS days in order to have a reversible image processing workflow.

My typical workflow, using a digital camera, is:

- Load files from SD card onto computer via Lightroom Classic. The files go into a date-organized file directory structure on my Working external drive. I add basic annotation (location, keywords, etc) at the same time.
- Once that's done is a good time to quit Lightroom and do a backup to my archives. Then...
- Review and select images to finish render. I use the flag markings to quickly isolate which ones I think are promising, and just narrow the view to only those flagged after one pass through.
- Do whatever editing/rendering is needed on each photo In that set.
- Do another review pass on the rendered images to rate them and decide which ones to export for use.
- Select and export all the finalized picks for the intended use.
- Quit Lightroom and run the backup again, to capture all the edited finished products into the backup as well.

Using a film camera requires the additional steps up front to capture the photos digitally (after processing the negatives...) before incorporating them into the workflow, it's not very different otherwise.

There's little mysterious about the Lightroom catalog and file handling. It's basically keeping track of what you've added to the system and what editing you've done: you shouldn't have to think about it much at all. Just remember that wherever you put the files on your system is where the originals are, and wherever you export the finished work to in the file system is where they are as well. You don't have to manually remember the file names or disk locations since the software does all that records keeping for you.

I've never gotten on with Capture 1 ... seems way too complicated to me ... but I've used a lot of other image processing software over the years successfully. LR seems quite a bit simpler than most of the others, and produces good quality results. The camera calibration files are not always perfect ... and you can create or obtain other calibration files, add them to the LR system, to change the imperfections of the standard ones to other imperfections you might prefer...

G

 

[bab]

C1 SESSIONS is your immediate answer it will catalogue your shoots by the name of the shoot or the date. Also sessions are easily save as a whole on a particular hard drive.
From C1 after initial editing you can round-trip the image to and from PS it will then reside in the Sessions folder along with all your images from that shoot...couldn't be easier.
LR is fantastic now for editing of files that need masking, etc blown skies, subject selection, object selection, lifting shadows, selective color adjustments. It can come close to PS but if you can really use PS extensively then LR is just a appetizer.
PS strongly advise TK8 panels and Lumenzia to speed up your workflow.
good luck with what ever road you take most of us have traveled the same roads.

 

[VTech]

I've been testing Capture One for a few hours the past couple of days. And also been watching some videos in the learning hub.
Today I quickly tested DXO Photolab as well.

My thoughts
DXO Photolab
I like that you can directly browse files, there's no need to import.
While not having to import, it does have a management system added to it.
The whitebalance acts a bit weird.
Some of the special features like smart lighting didn't really work out in the few pictures I tested it on.
I do like the cursor buttons to have a more precise control rather than sliders.
The color wheel seems pretty good in the quick tests I did, better than photoshop it seemed.
The retouching surprised me, it seemed very good. But very slow...
I miss layers
I miss my presets
Fuji Raw seems very sharp, almost too sharp
My general impression is that it's a bit too much numbers for how the images turn out. Which doesn't seem to suit my needs.
There is however a positive simplicity around it that I very much liked.

Capture ONE
The exposure and high dynamic range tools sometimes give me a hard time. I'm used to Adobe Raw extensive amount of options for that part.
Also those adjustments in Adobe Raw seem to behave quite a bit differently.
Retouching seems okeyish, but not great. Might need further testing.
The look and feel of the program is amazing.
The way you can customize everything, grab a window move it over the image, use the slider, pop it back is very cool.
Since importing is a must, Sessions is pretty great. It took me a few tries to wrap my head around it though.
I miss my presets, also only .ICC is supported, no common .cube files for LUTS
Also amazing export functionalities which I haven't used yet, but definitely going to use.
So altough more complex on the management part, it's incorporated in a sleek way and has a lot of added functionality.
Fuji Raw seems very sharp, no strange artefacts!
My general impression, it's missing a bit in the retouching department, and I probably need to get used to the exposure and high dynamic range sliders.
But I like the rest. I think if I can make or find some good presets that it will be able to replace Photoshop for 90% of my needs.

Might try Affinity.
If it's more or less as good as Photoshop for retouching. Than It would be a great combo with Capture ONE.

 

[vjbelle]

C1 layers can become very addictive. Each layer can be manipulated regardless of the stack location. Can't do that in PS. For getting the finest detail out of my files (Fuji, Phase, Sony) nothing beats PS. Selecting in PS is the easiest to use for me. There are also lots of plugins for PS that aren't available for other raw developers. So I bounce back and forth from C1 to PS but no matter what the file ends up in PS for some work.

Victor B.

 

[VTech]

I've been using Capture ONE now for a short period.
How do you guys manage and organise your portfolio?

I've been trying to wrap my head around what I'd use best. A session or a catalog.
A catalog is probably designed for this. But a session feels more intuitive for me. Mainly the part where a session is always watching the capture (and other) folders.
While with a catalog you have to import them and use the catalog to move images etc.
The copy images to catalog could be something.

Besides catalog or session.
I would do it like this.

Folder holding my preferred images --> Capture ONE tag (project), organise on rating and album/smart album for Portfolio / Website / Instagram --> Output to Portfolio folder and/or Website folder and/or Instagram folder

What I'm wondering as well is, should I export it to a subfolder with the projectname?
For instance
Folder instagram --> contains folder project A, folder project B, folder project C --> folder project A --> Image(Instagram recipe).Jpeg

That probably seems tidy and organized, but I feel like that could get a bit messy after some time? Or atleast cumbersome to quickly view the whole instagram folder for instance.
Also wondering if I should have these project subfolders when importing (or with a session in the capture folder). That's something that seems like I can do in Capture ONE and just have one big folder where I dump all my selected photo's. In Capture ONE I can than Album them with project name and date, tag them, etc.

One thing in my plan that I'm pretty sure of, is that I want those output folders (Portfolio / Website / Instagram) constantly backed-up somewhere so that I can easily access them from where I want.
Not that I have to look for project folder on a drive or computer to make an instagram post. Working laptop and computer is not helping since some files are on computer and some are on laptop. That's why I'm sure I want these final output folders accessible from both laptop, computer, etc.

Sorry for the rambling.
Of course it's all subjective, what works for you.
But I've been tinkering a lot, and looking at others workflows might help.
How do you guys streamline this?