1.4. Winnowing Your Shoot
Photographers who are moving from film to digital are fast learning that they have
to establish a whole new routine for what used to be called "initial editing." To
distinguish it from the simple business of looking at slides and negatives on a light
table and throwing out anything that isn't worth keeping, that process has acquired
a new trade namewinnowingwhich encompasses the following:

Organizing and regrouping
Photos that are closely related or that show a time sequence should have
their thumbnails moved next to one another. These days, that process is
called Lightableing. You should do the same to all photos of the same
subject that were shot in the same location, lighting condition, and cropping.
This results in arranging photos into what I call sequences. You do this to
automate the basic processing of whole groups of images at one time and to
batch rename and add metadata to whole groups of files at one time.

Renaming
Once images have been grouped into sequences, you can use the Batch
rename command to add an abbreviation that indicates the subject of that
sequence, such as "red dress cu." You can then Batch rename the entire
sequence.

Adding metadata
You will want to add metadata such as copyright information and descrip
tive
keywords. Once entered, metadata stays with the file as it is copied and
manipulated. This way it's easier to prove copyright or find and collect files
that belong to a particular group or category.

Ranking the images
You are able to rank images with a star rating. It then becomes possible to

hether you can get away
without retouching before you present. Second, you will have to decide how you're
going to make the presentation. You didn't think Photoshop was going to give you
only one choice, did you?
1.6.1. Retouching for Client Approval
First, regarding retouching, there are two more problems: retouching can be
destructive and, although there are ways to retouch nondestructively, they can't be
done in Camera Raw. Then, of course, there's the fact that retouching can be one of
the most time-
consuming facets of image processing. Next, you have to realize that
the glamorization of the subject is the whole point of the three disciplines of
photography that I mentioned above: fashion (including glamour), portraiture, and
product photography. You shouldn't present the image in less than its best form.
That's a bummer, because otherwise you can simply create all the presentation
formats directly from your RAW files. The compromise I make is to retouch the
shot I'd most like to see chosen and then make it clear in the presentation that this
is how all the images in that series would look, should one of them be chosen. So I
save that shot as a Photoshop file before I put the images into the presentation and
use only the Healing and Clone tools that will put their retouching strokes on a
blank layer. You'll find the steps for doing this in Chapter 8.
On rare occasions, I may use other tools if it's the only way to sell the client, but
even then retouching is all done on a copy of the main subject layer (usually the
Background layer). Once again, Chapter 8 will outline most types of retouching
that will be needed. The reason it's mentioned so late in the book is due to the
extreme potential for destruction in retouching, which dictates that it be placed as
far along as possible in the workflow to eliminate repeating other steps if you need
to make a revision. So just remember that there's a very good chance you'll want to
delete this retouching later in the process and that you'll have to do it all over
again. It won't be as painful if you avoid doing any more than is necessary this
early in the game.

from one another. I know photographers who have collected half a dozen or so
third-party programs that they use primarily for creating galleries.
NOTE

All the automatically created galleries are editable in any HTML editor. So if you
don't like the style, you can always open the gallery in Adobe Go Live or
Dreamweaver and redesign it interactively.

PDF presentations
If you're still in love with the tradition of inviting the client over for a live
slide show, this is the way to do
it. The advantage is that the audience gets to
chime in all at once and it's easy to have the conversation bounce around
among art director(s), client reps, photographers, and assistants. The big
downside is that there's no way to put the image's filename on screen so it
can be noted. Furthermore, there's no equivalent to taking the slide out of the
projector to give to the photographer as a sign of approval. The potential
versatility of PDF documentsthey can be read on most computers and over
the Internetholds a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the potential is limited.
You'd be better off hooking up an LCD projector to your laptop and running
a web gallery from a CD as a means of running a slide show.

1.7. Preliminary Editing
Now we come to the point in
this book where the workflow of Photoshop editing
and manipulation begins to take place. There are two main stages in this workflow:
Camera Raw and Photoshop.
1.7.1. Editing Stage 1: Camera Raw
Before you get into Photoshop, make sure you've done everything possible in
Camera Raw to give yourself a good foundation. Remember, everything you do in


Transparent Layers
Use for retouching and compositing.

Duplicate the image when you must convert from 16-bit to 8-bit mode
That way, you can always go back to make changes in the 16-bit mode.
Also, add "8b" to the end of the filename. You should assume that all the
other images were output from Camera Raw to 16-bit mode, where you'd
have the most adjustment latitude.
By following the steps above in order, you will easily locate the point where you
made a revision to your image. Moreover, you're working from the place where the
adjustment affects more of the overall image to the place where it affects lessat
least until you get past the point of using Adjustment Layers. You are basically
turning off layers from the top down. When you get to the point where your image
is free of any content or characteristics you don't want it to have, stop and start
building new layers.
Now here's the really good part. You can keep the old layers, group them
into a set
or sets, and then turn off the set. Then, if you want to show yourself or an art
director the difference between one version of the image and others, you just turn
the layer sets on and off. This allows you to display whole ranges of interpretat
ions
of an image without ever having to change images. The specific tasks you'll do
during this phase are covered in Chapters 5 through 11.