Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2: Industrial-Strength Production Techniques

Chapter 7: It’s All About the Workfl ow

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Planning and Strategy

An effi cient workfl ow requires planning. Photoshop CS, Bridge, and Cam-

era Raw 2.x offered a limited amount of workfl ow fl exibility. Photoshop

CS2, Bridge, and Camera Raw 3.x offer many more options. You can fl ail

around and try everything—it’s actually not a bad way to get your feet wet,

though I hope you’ll use the information in this chapter to make your fl ail-

ing somewhat methodical—but at some point, you have to decide what

works, and stick with it.

Among the things you need to decide, and stick with, are the following:

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Bridge cache. You can use a centralized cache, or use distributed caches.

Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but your life will be simpler, and

your workfl ow more robust, if you pick one approach and stick to it.

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Camera Raw settings for individual images. You can save the Camera

Raw settings for each image in the Camera Raw database, in sidecar

.xmp fi les, or in the case of DNG format, in the DNG fi le itself. It’s slightly

easier to switch from one approach to another in Bridge with Camera

Raw 3.x than it was with File Browser and Camera Raw 2.x, but doing

so requires considerable work and a great deal of care.

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File naming conventions. After much wrestling with the subject, I no

longer rename my raw fi les—I rely on keywords and other metadata to

help me fi nd my images. But that isn’t an approach that works for every-

one. If you do rename your raw fi les, though, pick a naming convention

that makes sense to you, and stick with it.

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Labels and ratings. The labels and ratings you apply in Bridge or Camera

Raw are simply arbitrary fl ags. Labels and ratings give you two sets of

fl ags, each of which contains six possible values when you include no

label and no rating. It’s entirely up to you what they mean. Again, pick

a system that makes sense to you, and stick with it!

You’ll need to make plenty of decisions when you’re working on your im-

ages. It’s a Bad Idea to start making decisions about any of the above when

you’re working on a deadline, because doing so introduces complexity (of

which you already have enough) and increases the chance of unintended

consequences (which you want to avoid).