Share your capture one/RAW workflow!

[haring]

Share your capture one/RAW workflow!

(I don't have one that's why I am asking you. I would like to learn from you all...)

Do you use Capture one with Lightroom or Photoshop?

Thanks!

[JWCustomPhotography]

Honestly, my workflow sucks... for various reasons, and mostly from bad habits from the getgo.

I throw my raw files into aperture

I run through them and flag all the absolute garbage.

I go through them again quickly and one star the ones that are worth working on. (I am a hoarder, so I like to keep as many files as possible, though this I know will have to change, and that change is coming very soon)

Then I filter out everything that is one star, and I run through those and rate them from 1-4, and 5 being ones that may hit the portfolio.

then I filter everything out thats 2 and above, and make sure those are all cropped and processed the way I want. Anything other than the basics gets exported to photoshop and edited, then saved and referenced back into aperture.

I am also working on my processes for getting large orders to the Lab, like T&I work, and my mini sessions etc.

This works ok enough for me, but need some extra tweaks when I get to the final stage. Not to mention my 500 gig drive is nearly full,and I have to figure out how I am going to work around this.

I look forward to seeing how others handle this.. and what steps I do that I may have left out that you may have been looking for.

[reader0428]

Don't know about Capture One but here is what I do:

1. Copy RAW files from card to external hard drive
2. Backup to 2nd external hard drive
3. Import full shoot into Lightroom; make a new collection set with the client's name as the title of the set
5. 1st collection in the set is called Full Shoot and all files go there.
6. Quickly go through images, flagging ones wth potential and discarding (then deleting) obviouly bad ones - bad expression, OOF, etc.
7. Move the flagged ones from the first go-round to the 2nd collection in the set, titled "Picks"
8. Inside the Picks collection, go through a little more carefully, flagging the ones I want to spend time editing. Move those to 3rd collection in the set, called "Selects".
9. At this point I usually still have too many in the Selects folder (my goal is to edit 35 or fewer images from a portrait session), so I cull it down some more.
10. Make exposure and WB tweaks as necessary in LR, then pull into photoshop for facial retouching and sharpening.
11. After the PS edit, I go back to LR and crop as desired. (I learned the hard way NOT to crop before pulling into PS - I ended up needed a larger crop on an image I'd already edited in PS and had to redo the whole thing.) I label my finished files green (for GO!). When I'm through with all the edits I filter by the green label, select all, and export them all at once.

I'm sure there are faster/better ways of working but this has been pretty smooth. Adapted from Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom 3.

[S-Man]

I tried Capture One for a while and wanted to like it. Ended up not liking it at all. I'm sure it's good if you get to learn it extensively, but I moved on to LR only.
Currently I'm using Photomechanic and it's awesome. Cut down my wedding and portrait cull times immensely. After I cull in Photomechanic, I run the keepers through LR for the proof gallery, then run a few through PS.
Keep it as quickly as possible to keep your $/hour up.

[srwatters]

I use C1 as a raw developer for my P45 files. I'm not thrilled with the job it does on my Nikon D3 raws, so I stick with Adobe Camera Raw there. I've watched some of the video tutorials for C1 and it appears to have some great capabilities, but after using ACR for so long, it's hard to change gears and think differently. My workflow remains:

Nikon: Import/rename with PhotoMechanic, cull using color tags
PhaseOne: Tethered shoot/capture/name with C1, cull using color tags
Nikon: Raw develop with ACR, output to 16bit Pro Photo color space PSD file
PhaseOne: Raw develop with C1, output to 16bit Pro Photo color space tif file
Both: Edit image with Photoshop PS CS5, save master as layered PSD file
Both: Flatten, crop, convert to 8 bit aRGB, save master print image as tif
Both: Convert to sRGB, resize to web, add logo, save as jpg

And there you have it. Remember that I make individual images with typically no more than 8 to 10 final files per shoot. I don't do weddings or senior portraits.

[Brisbane Photographer]

I have been using Capture One since 2004ish. I have run tests and it seems to handle Raw files very well when compared to other programs (LR and Aper).

My workflow (atm - constantly changing)
1. Create new session on my desktop (tethered - even though not shooting tethered)
2. Import raw files, adding copyright to me
3. make small changes to files in groups (white balance, small exposure, add sharpening to everything - different for different ISO's (probably not the best way but it sharpens so well...), some noise reduction (but not too much - careful here) - I still want my files as good as they can be on camera so you are not rescuing everything.
4. Output at 100% to tiff file all files
5. Bridge to rate images 5-good, 4-pretty good, 3 if I am really desperate (but mainly for transplants - eyes heads etc.)
6. Run a levels and crop action in PS CS3
7. Open each and have a quick look
8. Renumber
9. resize, save as final jpeg, make smaller, watermark and save as facebook size
10. celebrate - it is all over....

[d2creative]

I do think C1 has a slight edge in RAW development, and like others I have tried to like it several times, including the latest release, but Lightroom's interface is just done so well and makes everything so quick and easy, that for the type of photography I do, C1's slight edge just isn't enough to warrant me using it as part of my workflow.

So instead my entire workflow is done through LR and then exported to Photoshop for final tweaks.