Im using workflow below, but it seams lengthy. Any idea how i can improve
-shoot pics in raw
-convert raw in adobe raw, and ajust exposure and wb (mostly in batch)
-copy images to a folder and reduce size in batch command.
-Upload to online storage and share link.
Problem.is i shot a 90 min rugby game and ended up with around 900 pics and it took me 2 days to go through all of them.
Thanks for any advice or fornsharing ur own workflow.
The workflow depends on how fast you must deliver the photos and how many photos you have to deliver.
I am only an enthusiast sports photographer
If I cover the whole event this is my workflow ( not the fastest )
I shoot in Raw.
Import to Lightroom into a folder for the event (with presets for metadata and basic development settings) and the photos are renamed (I use date-time-seq).
I go through the photos to select the keepers and most of them are directly cropped and straightened.
Then for the keepers only:
I set the WB for one Photo and sync it to all photos in those the light conditions;
choose Auto in Quick Develop for all;
tweek the Auto settings in quick development (add a little bit of exposure and add contrast);
update the metadata.
The photos are then exported (with preset options) for sharing.
Some pro-friends of mine who need to deliver very quickly to the newspaper and social media have another workflow:
They shoot in jpeg, have exposure and WB already right in camera (!);
rate the photos while shooting (!) ;
import only the rated photos to lightroom (or photo mechanic);
check if the photos are sharp (most of them are ) and they do some cropping;
update the metadata;
export and send to their newspaper.
Some of them import/archive their memory cards later when they have time.
My core WF is designed for rapid media turnaround ... I can get pictures to a media client ~15-minutes after a game and do a gallery of 50-75 images for a client team in about 2 hours. Its not much different from what is described above .. but everyone I know has a different personal approach.
I do not know a single sports media photographer who shoots D1 or pro sports who does not use Photomechanic. I could not work without it.
1) Capture images in RAW & JPEG (Card 1 RAW Card 2 JPEG)
2) When shooting, I mark a picture in camera with a "lock icon" when I think it is a media keeper.
3) Cull JPEGS in Photomechanic. Photomechanic is THE KEY to speed in my workflow.
4) Only rate photos 1 or 2 in Photomechanic-- 1 is for all keepers 2 is for likely media publication. Add meta data to #2s. Don't even touch or rate the others photos.
5) Pull all 1s and 2s into Lightroom and edit -- media keepers first.
6) Send pictures to client(s)
I save all my cards onto my raid drive in case I need to go back later. When I am doing media/client work I rarely touch the RAW files. If I have a killer picture I need to "save" because of poor execution or a client wants it for promotional use -- I'll work the RAW later. But frankly, for daily use media consumption, I get my exposure, white balance and colors right in camera. That's my job, really.
When I look at the work of the average photographers who shoot RAW and the better photographers who shoot in JPEG, frankly I can rarely tell the difference for daily media use. Now I can -- like most of us - tell when someone with strong editing skills has really spent some time on a RAW picture to get it absolutely perfect -- down to the eyelash. But that's just not practical if you are working on a short deadline. In my experience, sports pictures have a short shelf life. Speed is of the essence.
Sports Illustrated photographers used to shoot in RAW -- but they sent all of their pictures to a groups Photoshop editors who did nothing but process/improve the pictures. Unfortunately, I had to lay off my crew of professional photoshop editors for economic purposes
As Pure Michigan said, Photo Mechanic is the best. You can save so much time going through photos and either give them a star rating or a color rating. You can then send them to LR for bulk editing and then individual quick edits. Just as PM said, every pro photog I know is using Photo Mechanic. It speeds the workflow when you shoot entire games.
I do 100% of my editing in RAW in Capture One.
My workflow regardless of subject, my preferred basic settings applied on import:
1st pass - give anything usable **
Filter to just **
2nd pass looking closer give anything I want to keep working with ***
Fine tune processing on *** images.
Export to folder nested inside job folder.
Upload
Client picks get ****
Portfolio picks get *****
I shoot pro-soccer and I'm under deadlines right before the half and at the end of each match. Deadlines force you to develop a very fast process. IMO, it requires you know the environment prior to shooting and have the necessary camera settings locked down. Automated PP doesn't fair well when settings are being adjusted throughout the match. Ex) where I shoot, its 100% manual, ISO set to 3200, f/4, ss 1/1000. I purposefully set the back switch on the 1DX's to 'lock' so those settings can't be accidentally changed while I shoot.
1. During action lulls, review what you've shot in camera marking those you will be using.
2. Only ingest to PM(PhotoMechanic) those locked files (do not ingest everything). There is a setting in PM for it.
3. In PM, quickly cull out any that turn out to not meet your standard. If you need to crop it can be done in PM as well.
4. At this point you can either go into lightroom OR ACR with these photos. Either way, have a preset established that will automatically make your edits. Things like color temp, noise reduction, sharpening, lens correction, etc. I use ACR and have the ctrl-E in PM set to take all selected photos into ACR. Once there, I select all the photos, apply the preset, then export to jpgs on a thumb drive which in turn is handed off to a runner.
TIP: (Canon shooters), when you take a card out to ingest then put it back, the camera changes the default card where files can be locked. If it was set to card #1, putting it back changes it to card #2. SO, ALWAYS put the card back and immediately reset the default back to card #1. Nothing worse than being thrown a curve ball in the middle of your process when you attempt to ingest locked files only to find none on the card.
maroun.c wrote:
Im using workflow below, but it seams lengthy. Any idea how i can improve
-shoot pics in raw
-convert raw in adobe raw, and ajust exposure and wb (mostly in batch)
-copy images to a folder and reduce size in batch command.
-Upload to online storage and share link.
Problem.is i shot a 90 min rugby game and ended up with around 900 pics and it took me 2 days to go through all of them.
Thanks for any advice or fornsharing ur own workflow.
I shoot everything RAW, but I do not upload all of my images. If I shot 1000, images, I may only upload 100 images... If you are uploading more than that, then you aren't working your best files.
Get PhotoMechanic; use it do ingest your images and apply basic metadata; tag your good images; edit those in Camera RAW, Lightroom or Capture One (the best); save Images as JPEG (10 or higher) and upload.
If you aren't captioning your images specifically, this should take an hour, no more than two.
Can you edit your images first without converting to DNG? Like, Use Photo Mechanic to ingest and cull images to proper amount, open in Camera Raw and batch edit exposure/wb, then export as a reduced size through Camera Raw to your folder. While uploading to online storage, have the DNG converter running in the background on the Raw files. If I shoot raw, I convert to a subfolder when I'm done then delete the original raws when done.
Photo Mechanic recently came out with a new version (6) that is faster and less expensive. I've been using PM for 18 years and it is the best way to cull images.
If speed is important to you, I recommend working on how to cull images. For me, I go through a take of 800-100 in about 10 minutes. I tag images that I think work and move on quickly. I don't spend too much time looking at each one. From that first take, I'm usually at 30-50 images. I filter in PM for tagged only and go through again to remove more photos which usually takes me to 20-25. I can write basic captions, edit in camera raw, and be done in about 30 minutes. I only shoot jpegs though, no raw for me.
maroun.c wrote:
Im using workflow below, but it seams lengthy. Any idea how i can improve
-shoot pics in raw
-convert raw in adobe raw, and ajust exposure and wb (mostly in batch)
-copy images to a folder and reduce size in batch command.
-Upload to online storage and share link.
Problem.is i shot a 90 min rugby game and ended up with around 900 pics and it took me 2 days to go through all of them.
Thanks for any advice or fornsharing ur own workflow.
p.1 #10 · Complete workflow for sports photography
The only detail I will had to the workflows described above is the use of Photo Mechanic "code replacement." I shoot motorsports and need to send to photos to the news outlets immediately after the events on track. The photos need to have driver and team names embedded in the photos. Photo Mechanic has the capability to very efficiently add this information from a text file that is created prior to the event.
p.1 #11 · Complete workflow for sports photography
Awesome tips guys, thank you.
I need to really learn LR better so that I can process more images at the same time. I find myself editing one photo, then copying the setting I used and applying those settings to each photo as I select it. (not doing an entire batch at once) Then I run into the problem of changing light conditions and my camera adjusting ISO during shooting depending on the metering point and cloud cover. So I usually have to change the WB slightly and go up or down on exposure settings on nearly each photo separately.
Each of my last two runs I had ~250 photos each and it took roughly an hour and a half to cull them and get ~40 photos edited to my liking. This includes completely deleting photos from the disk because they were OOF or I really couldn't get a good angle on what I was trying to get.
p.1 #12 · Complete workflow for sports photography
Tons of great info here but I’ll chime in. I’m the fastest person out of pro sports events in my area.
I shoot raw
Tag good photos in camera during time outs
Import with photo mechanic and as many mentioned this is the key step (great company too)
I make my selects in photo mechanic and write my captions. I then send those to a folder I keep on my desktop
Import all of those to Lightroom and tone them, then export to a preset depending on the client.
You don’t need to use any of these things, literally a million different ways. I’m the only person in my markets that use Lightroom for instance. Many others use photoshop. Almost no top level sports photographer you’ve ever seen shoots raw. I’m in a very small minority on that front. But I prove to them over and over I can still beat them on these steps even shooting raw.
Definitely check out photo mechanic though, software is priceless. I hope to do some tutorials on my YouTube channel about it, however v6 currently has a glitch with certain users and I am one of them. So waiting that out first.
p.1 #13 · Complete workflow for sports photography
There are more out there shooting RAW than one might think and who use PM plus LR. Agreed on PM v6.0, stay with v5 until they get their issues resolved.
p.1 #14 · Complete workflow for sports photography
I'm a Jpeg shooter. My MiLB client specifically asked for no RAW images. All files go to them for use by them. I ingest using PM, I typically shoot 600-1,000+ images per game to include marketing, fans and game action. I typically don't cull during a shoot, but I do some with this client as noted by some above comments.
I have to deliver product to the client within 30 minutes post game which means I don't have time for the extra time RAW files take to upload. Yes I know you can shoot to two cards.... But it eats up drive space when they don't want it or need it...
p.1 #15 · Complete workflow for sports photography
Thanks for all the great info. Will get PM As soon as issues are sorted. Will slso experiment in couple matches in shooting raw and jpeg if. I'm not hard pressed for pics right after a shoot so loafing time or space isn't a big concern. Will try the difervent advice in all replies and am sure will find a better way than what I'm doing
p.1 #16 · Complete workflow for sports photography
mikeinctown wrote:
Awesome tips guys, thank you.
I need to really learn LR better so that I can process more images at the same time. I find myself editing one photo, then copying the setting I used and applying those settings to each photo as I select it. (not doing an entire batch at once) Then I run into the problem of changing light conditions and my camera adjusting ISO during shooting depending on the metering point and cloud cover. So I usually have to change the WB slightly and go up or down on exposure settings on nearly each photo separately.
Each of my last two runs I had ~250 photos each and it took roughly an hour and a half to cull them and get ~40 photos edited to my liking. This includes completely deleting photos from the disk because they were OOF or I really couldn't get a good angle on what I was trying to get. ...Show more →
I change settings throughout a game, but in Lightroom you can filter by ISO..I shoot using aperture priority with 1/2000 minimum shutter speed and auto iso. I do global adjustments for each iso.
p.1 #18 · Complete workflow for sports photography
I wish I could get away with jpeg for what I do but with changing light, it's difficult because there's times- even when you're vigilant that you blow the exposure more than I can recover in LR.
My work flow is camera raw to LR then delete OOF, then delete photos that aren't desirable, then export. It's needlessly cumbersome.
p.1 #19 · Complete workflow for sports photography
I shoot mainly Soccer and jpg only (Canon 7DII) unless lighting is fluctuating. I send highest quality jpg to one card and a medium quality jpg to second SD card which is a Eyefi Mobi pro wifi card. Between bursts I review and tag images to be sent automatically to my iPhone over wifi. At the half and at the end of the match I quickly review the transferred images and pick the few keepers to be sent to the social media person to post online. I edit / crop the images in photoshop express on the phone prior to emailing them. The images can be up online within 20-30 minuets of the match and often at halftime. As others have commented, there is high demand for rapid posting of images to social media.
After the match I use Lightroom to edit the full quality jpg images to put in a gallery.
I haven't posted here for years but have found the community knowledgable and helpful in the past. Glad to be back!
p.1 #20 · Complete workflow for sports photography
I see many of the MLB guys pulling their card between innings and downloading selected imaged right into their iPhone. Quick edit on phone and upload. Not sure how they are captioning, but they get them out fast. I use Photomechanic to ingest and cull only my locked files. I would like to find a FAST editor that doesn't charge me a monthly fee. I used to use Apple Aperture, but they killed it on newer operating systems. Have tried On 1 Camera Raw , only problem is it is too slow to export changes. Thoughts?
In our photo room, almost all of them shoot in raw, use PM then ACR, then out.
