RAW Photography Workflow
I’m both a photographer and web designer so I use Lightroom, Photoshop CS4 and Bridge almost daily.
I love Photoshop but when it comes to photography, I think, hands down Lightroom is your best choice for importing, managing, editing and exporting your photos.
It doesn’t matter what type of digital camera you have.
It doesn’t matter what type of computer you have.
It doesn’t matter if you print at home, at a retailer or upload online. 
Maybe you want to build a book of photos or a website or export to Facebook, Picassa, Flickr or others? You can copyright and/or watermark and make your color, curves, sharpening adjustments inside of Lightroom without the complexity of Photoshop!
I’m sure I’ll hear from the super advance CS4 techies will say you can do more in CS4 but for 90% of the world Lightroom will cover everything you need! I only use CS4 for advanced photo editing or being creative with a poster/flyer or color blends.
RAW Rules!
As Rick Sammon says “RAW RULES” so always shoot RAW. Cameras are basically small computers. When you take a photo it’s taken in a RAW format. If your camera is set to JPG, the camera then adjusts/color corrects and compresses your image into a JPG format. This is why an advertised 10mb camera shoots 6-7mb images!
I have too much money and time invested in taking my photos so don’t let your camera convert and compress your images into a JPG! Set your camera to RAW format. Yes the images are larger but the results are so much better!
Don’t delete images on the camera
Another pet peeve of mine: I never make a decision to delete a photo from the LCD on the back of the camera. Sure I use the LCD to view the histogram but you can adjust exposure, white balance, levels, curves and more after you import to your computer so whey delete an image too early? I feel too many people are spending too much time looking down at the LCD when you should be looking up for better photos! If you need to delete them later do it from your monitor!
My workflow in Lightroom works like this:
Before importing into Lightroom you have to setup Camera Calibration presets in LR to match your camera. I shoot Canon so there are camera calibration settings in the camera like “Faithful, Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral” and others. It doesn’t matter which one you use just make sure you match them up in Lightroom! This will improve your images and reduce your workflow time! The calibration presets for all major camera manufacturers are included in the RAW plugin included in LR. The problem is they aren’t applied automatically to the photos during import.
Create Camera Calibration Presets first
So the first step is to open Lightroom and go to the Develop Module and choose an image you have imported previously. In the right panel of LR go down to Camera Calibration and click next to profile and choose the first Camera Camera Calibration setting.
Next go to the left panel and click the “+” icon next to presets and name your preset to match the Camera Calibration profile you choose previously like “Camera Standard.” Be sure to uncheck all the boxes EXCEPT “Calibration” and click “Create.” You have now 
created a preset to apply to new photos when you import them. I generally have my camera in “Camera Standard” mode so when I import them I use that preset. You’ll find the colors and white balance will be more accurate and save you time in post processing!
Now do this again for all the Camera Calibration settings so you’ll have a preset for each.
Importing Photos
Now we are ready to import into Lightroom! Click back to the Library module and connect your camera or memory card to your USB cable. Some systems will automatically open Lightroom, others we need to choose “Import” in the lower right corner of the left panel in the Library Module 
In the Import photos dialog box choose the Camera Calibration preset from above that we created.
I suggest you use one master catalog for keyword consistently and ease of finding photos. If your catalog gets too big you can export groups to external catalogs and then delete from the master catalog but I don’t suggest this! I know some people to export each year to a separate catalog which may work. I’ve also heard about wedding photographers who create a catalog for each wedding and this too makes sense but I’m an everyday photographer!
In the import dialog box I choose a folder and I do use a base folder for the current year like 2009. I put all the folders of images by date in that annual year folder and change this at the end of each year. The LR import then puts the images in a folder with the date taken like 2009-09-10 and this is fine for me. I’m not a big fan of naming folders, I search more by keywords and collections but this is your ultimate preference.
There’s so many options in Lightroom this is why it’s so popular but also why so many people are confused with which direction to go.
Under Information to Apply you choose your develop settings or preset you created earlier. If your camera is set to Camera Standard choose the matching preset here to save yourself a lot of time when you start to develop your images AND get the image exposure and white balance set like they were when you took them
Next choose your Metadata and if you haven’t created a setting yet be sure and do that. I don’t care if you are just getting started be sure you put your name and information in the photos so you get credit for the work you have done!
Next I put something in the keywords folder. Adding keywords is tedious but extremely important! So to lessen the work later at least put the location by city, state, etc. Don’t worry about using a date as that is already part of the photo data in the camera. Keywords are words you’ll search for these photos. I don’t like using “Bob’s birthday” as that is a description of the event. Rather use the keyword People>Bob, birthday as individual keywords. Once you import the photos you can keyword images individually or by groups later.
I leave file names as they are from the camera, I’ll change the file names later in my development process.
Click import and take a break to give Lightroom some time to import the photos and create the preview files.
Image Processing
So at this point your photos have been imported, the camera calibration is set, you have some keywords and now you have to go through the images and find the rejects. In the Library Module open the image in full view and use the right arrow key to look at the photo then click to the next photo and so on. If it’s a reject photo (out of focus, nothing to salvage) use your left finger to press the “X” key and it will be grayed out and marked for delete later.
The goal here is SPEED. I like to get my brain focused on one process at a time and move through the group of images I’m working on a few times. So first pass look at them closely and get rid of any out of focus or useless photos.
Key wording your images
On the next pass, I go back to the first photo from this group and change my “brain” over to keywords and Facebook. I press G to go into grid mode in Library module. I then select images and Shift-Click a group of photos or Ctrl-click individual photos and then apply keywords. I think about who, what, where, when and why. I know this is time consuming but it pays off later. When I need to find a photo later or create a book of photos for a friends birthday party I can find them very easy!
Stars and Colors
As you go through your photos you may find some really good images. Some photos will just stand out. Great composition, colors a great smile or action shot. As I see the photos I give them a one star rating and it’s easy. Simply select the photo and press the number “1” on your keyboard. Later when I want to work on star photos I can filter all my photos and then give the best ones 2 stars and keep narrowing them down.
Don’t give your photos a 5 star right away, you have no way to narrow them down later!
I wasn’t sure what the color labels were intended for but one day I had an epiphany! This is how I can keep track of my images I will sell as stock, or Facebook images or the HDR images I’ve created. Confused? Read the next section
Facebook Photos
I have a number of friends on Facebook and I never post a photo to embarrass anyone but I do take a lot of photos at events. People love seeing pictures of themselves online and it’s a great way to promote yourself as a photographer! To make this process simple I use the color ratings. So as I’m clicking photos to add keywords of friends I then press number “9” and a blue rating is applied to the photo. Later I can create a filter and find these images and export directly to Facebook with a plugin from Jeffrey Friedl.
Stars are for my best photos and I add one star or press the 1 key for coming back later to make my star photos better! My first goal after each photo shoot is to move through all the images efficiently to remove the rejects and complete the corrections to then upload to my website, send to my client or ??
Develop Module
Next I move over to the develop module and go back to the first image. I press the J key to turn on the clipping mask and the image will show in red and blue which areas of the photo are over or under exposed.
I won’t be able to detail the image correction process here but now I change/adjust exposure, brightness, levels, curves and more. I crop and cut images down to the best!
I love using the Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation sliders!
Finally when all the photos are ready for export I highlight them all in the Library Module and press F2 to rename the files with a name keeping in mind keywords or SEO so people can find my images online easier.
Again I’m going over my workflow here and not a tutorial on how to edit photos in Lightroom!
Time to Export, Print, Go to Web
I now have my images renamed, with keywords, cropped, cut, corrected and now it’s time to export.
I export using the SmugMug Plugin from Jeffrey Friedl. He also has a Metadata Wrangler that allows me to include the Meta I want and remove what I don’t want. The image shows the most current list of plugins Jeffrey offers. His plugins are awesome!
If you don’t want to export to an online gallery and prefer to just have hi-res images you can export to your local hard drive. Next take the hi-res JPG files to put them on a CD or DVD and give to your friends or clients.
Posting to your blog
Finally I pick one favorite image in the group I have shot. Next I export to a JPG file with the longest edge 300 pixels in length and quality set to 96dpi. This keeps the size of the image down so it loads fast and I can upload to my blog, write comments about the event and refer visitors to my SmugMug site to purchase images!
Examples: My Blog http://blog.bobfoto.com and my SmugMug site http://www.BobFoto.com
Summary
It’s taken years for me to get this far! I remember many people asking about workflow and it’s tough to write the detail needed to fully explain your workflow process. I also think other photographers don’t want to share their process, I’m not sure why? I will continue to improve and hone my workflow over time.
If you have any questions or comments post them here!
Are you looking for more detail? I’ve started writing a book and expanding the workflow process above with more details and expanded explanations. If you would be interested in buying a copy email Bob@INEVO.com and we’ll let you know when they are ready!
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