workflow suggestions
Cheers
I import my photos directly into the organiser. Then I back them up. Even the duds (you never know when they might come in handy).
I then sort through and decide which ones I want to work on. By opening a RAW file in full edit you automatically come into Camera RAW where you can do the initial tweaks to the photo. Try playing with it yourself and see what you like best. You can change the white balance here as well as lots of other adjustments. Do not touch the saturation slider, but do try the vibrance and clarity sliders. If you have a lot of photos taken at the same time you can do a batch conversion by selecting them and then opening them all in camera raw, and again selecting them all. Whatever you do to the top photo will also be done to the rest. If you find you are always using the same settings you can save these, page 224 in MM tells you how.
You can also crop in camera RAW, and do some initial sharpening if you wish.
In full edit I then do further things like levels, etc and sharpening, though I don't sharpen all my photos. I save them as jpegs since Tiffs are huge and I don't have the room for them. You can try the auto settings first if you like, but generally doing it yourself is better.
Since I have backed up the originals I don't save the converted RAW as a set version with the original.
I'd suggest starting with a photo you are happy with but which isn't a keeper and just play with it to see what everything does to it. Who knows it may turn into a keeper
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106 posts
15 years
Inverness
I have just installed Elements 7 and am presently going through the book " The Missing Manual", However I am finding it all a bit daunting. I am finding that I am prbaly trying to do to many things and in the wrong order. I am shooting mainly raw files but also some JPEG's. My work is mostly landscapes. I just looking for a few tweaks here and there to end up with a good looking final image which I would probably wish to print off to A4 size of just store for the future. I usually like to crop a bit of images and sharpen ( when I find the best way to sharpen). If anyone could suggest a logical workflow that I might follow I would be very grateful. Also anything I should really get to learn or avoid?
Cheers
Johna