Workflow is the term given to the usual steps you take once you've transferred the RAW photos to the computer. (See RAW vs JPEG for a discussion of when to use RAW.)

This guide describes my workflow, from opening the RAW image to creating web galleries.

Stage 1: The 'negative cull'

The first thing I want to do is get rid of the obvious failures and duplicates. I do this by copying both the RAW+JPEG files into a temporary directory. I then use the standard Windows picture-viewer to view the JPEGs (it ignores the NEFs). Any that are no good get deleted immediately. When I have two or more very similar shots, I use the JPEGs to choose the one I'm going to keep.

Once I have deleted the JPEGs, I delete the corresponding NEFs. This needs care, but is easy enough if you set the folder to Tile view (click the Views icon and then select Tiles). Any NEF next to a JPEG is retained, while 'orphan' NEFs are deleted. Important safeguards: I do not delete the original files from the microdrive, nor do I empty my Wastebasket, until the end of the entire workflow. If I accidentally delete a NEF I meant to keep, I thus have two other copies of it.

Stage 2: The 'positive cull'

In stage 1, I was only deleting the obviously duff shots, as well as effective duplicates. In this stage, I'm casting a more critical 'editorial' eye over them. Now I need to make a positive decision to keep each shot, otherwise it is deleted.

I again use Windows picture viewer to review the JPEGs. Here my question is 'Is this photo really worth keeping?'. Unless the answer is yes, it gets deleted. Of course, tis is a judgement call based on subjective criteria: I may keep a shot that you would have deleted, and delete one that you would have kept. The only exception here is with portraits, where it is the subject, rather than me, who needs to make the choice of shot.

I repeat the process of deleting the corresponding NEFs. Also, once this secondary cull is complete, I have no further need for the JPEGs, so I then delete all the remaining ones, leaving me only with the NEFs.

Stage 3: Opening the NEF (skip this stage if shooting JPEG)

While opinions vary on the relative merits of Nikon Capture versus Photoshop, for me the benefit of handling the entire workflow with one piece of software is a valuable one, so I do everything in Photoshop. Photoshop CS has RAW plug-ins for all major formats, including Nikon's NEF.

At this stage of reading in the RAW file, I check - and may adjust - three things:

White balance: This is so easy to correct in the PC that I tend to leave the camera white balance set to Auto most of the time. The only time I ever take an actual reading (using the reverse of a grey card) is if I want to ensure that I am faithfully capturing the actual colours. Most of the time, however, I view white balance as a useful creative tool, and will happily increase or decrease the colour temperature by eye to achieve the effect I want.

Exposure: The D70 tends to err on the side of caution by under-exposing images by something like 0.3 to 0.7 EV in order to avoid blowing highlights. Given that the exposure can be adjusted later, and shadows are recoverable while blown highlights are not, this is a sensible tactic on Nikon's part, so I usually leave this as is. However, I will usually want to correct the exposure, so I typically add 0.3 to 0.7EV when opening the RAW image. If I instead want to darken shadows, I will usually adjust the Shadow value instead of darkening the exposure.

Colour saturation: The D70 captures very lifelike colours. Ironically, this is a common complaint from new D70 owners who have got used to the artificially saturated colours of point-and-shoot digicams. Manufacturers quickly discovered that Joe Public rates images by how 'colourful' they are, and more tends to be perceived as better even when it bears no resemblence to the actual scene photographed. Some people ruin D70 images by boosting the saturation to truly Disneyesque proportions - please don't! I tend to add a touch extra saturation to very colourful scenes, where the colour is the point of the photo, if you like, but generally I am working with values in the 5-15 range. I would consider 25 to be an extreme case. Most images, and especially portraits, I leave the saturation alone.

Stage 4: Post-processing

See my Post-processing guide for details of the most common forms of post-processing - or click any of the direct links below (shift-click them if you want to leave this page open also):

- Crop: a slight adjustment to achieve standard print ratios
- Levels: adjusting brightness & contrast
- Curves: adjusting the tone of the image (including high-key & low-key images)
- B&W conversion: if desired
- Healing tool: to remove distracting elements from a photo, including facial blemishes
- Gaussian blur: to smooth skin
- Sharpening: to remove the softening of images created by digital sensors

Once my post-processing is complete, I save the finished TIF file and store it in the appropriate sub-directory within my Digital Negatives folder. I choose TIF rather than PSD for maximum compatibility - you can open a TIF in pretty much any image-editing software on the planet. I also save the original NEF in case I want to do different post-processing at a later date.

See my Storage & backup guide for tips on keeping your digital images safe.

Stage 5: Creating web version & thumbnail

Now that the processed TIF is safely saved, I run a three-stage action I created to produce the website images.

Action 1 resizes the image to 800 pixels wide (or 600 pixels tall, for vertical images), and creates a 1/2cm mat around the image. I then paste in a new layer containing my attribution text, position it and then run the next action.

Action 2 converts the image to 8-bit colour and saves it as a JPEG (under the same filename).

Action 3 creates the thumbnail by removing the matte and resizing to 160 pixels in the longest dimension. I haven't yet found a way of persuading an action to modify a filename, so the final Save As is done manually.

Stage 6: Web publishing

I move the JPEGs to the appropriate webserver directory, create the webpages and upload the JPEGs to the web.

My webpages are created using tables. The code looks very complicated, but that's only because I create a basic grid and then join cells together to create the slots I want for the thumbnails. I created templates for all-horizontal, all-vertical and mixed layout pages, so simply select the appropriate template for each directory.

You can see my galleries here.