Painting the Web

Photo Workflow: Camera to Web Redux

I have two Macs and a PC, and I managed to load all three with software when writing this book. It rather amazed me that it all worked together and I had a minimum of conflict or out-and-out battling for dominance. Other than each tool wanting to set itself as the default for opening certain types of files, they all behaved.

The point of this little anecdote is that you don't have to use only one tool, or one of each type of tool. If you want to have more than one photo editor installed on your machine—and you have the space and can afford it—load all editors if you wish and have a blast.

At the same time, I hope I demonstrated that you don't need several tools in order to prepare a photo for publishing on the Web. In most cases, a camera RAW processor and photo editor is all you need.

The type of tool is what's important, along with what it supports. Consider the groups of tools we looked at. First were the camera RAW tools. If you shoot in RAW you may or may not need a separate utility to process the RAW file, depending on whether your photo editing tool supports the format. Paint Shop Pro supports RAW directly; Photoshop does not, and provides a utility.

How much you process the photo in the RAW utility depends on how tightly integrated the tool is with the photo editor, and how much you like the results. If the utility is part of a set of products by the same company, you're probably better off performing the same processes in the editor until ...