Codebreaker wrote: If you're going to shoot off a few hundred RAW shots then I think you'll find processing them in Elements ACR a little on the slow side. LR will provide more controls and a much speedier workflow.
Colin
Colin,
I agree LR is the tool for speedy workflow. What do you think of the following text I just wrote yesterday about Elements workflow in such cases?
Creativity vs workflow
Even if we are in a creative forum, there are times when some planning ahead and workflow choices may help and save a lot of time. Here is a situation you may encounter:
You have just covered a family event, a wedding or similar reportage, which resulted in 500 – 1000 shots. You expect to select 150 – 250 for an online printing service on 4 x 6 in, so that every participant is shown. You want to setup a web gallery with a selection of 50 -100 shots and maybe the same selection optimized for digital frames. Maybe a slideshow? Of course, you are proud of 10 to 20 shots to be printed large with the best possible quality either at home or by a quality laboratory. That's a lot of work, part of which is pleasant and inspiring, part of which time consuming and boring. I add that you shot raw to take no risk with the bride's white satin gown and the available light shots of the dance party...
Here are a few ideas to get you started, supposing you are only using Elements 4 to 6 and ACR 4.0 to 4.3.
The good thing is you have a good idea of the different results to achieve. The technical requirements are not the same for digital frames and posters. However, you don't want to neglect cropping or highlight recovery on the bride's iggown, even for the web.
Now, you are left with 150 -250 shots which you could batch process from raw to jpeg (with multiple files, having set the ACR bit-depth to 8 bits). This is technically feasible, but that's not what you are after. However the process multiple file option will be excellent to save time for tasks which are not creative, such as resizing, compressing, final sharpening and saving in a given folder. Another obvious fact is that the editing of your keepers will mean another treatment, maybe working in aRGB, 16 bits and saving to tiff or PSD layered formats. So you are left with editing output options for standard printing, web and digital frame. The first ones require about 3 megapixels and a compression of 8 – 10. The last ones maybe 800x600 and more compression. If your editing is good enough for printing, no need to waste disk space or uploading time. But you want each individual shot to be correctly cropped, lighting and colour adjusted, with possible local enhancements such as cloning, dodging and burning...
Now, if you have sorted your raw files in different folders according to similarity of treatment, you want to useACR and Elements in the best possible way. Let's take an example, your good lighting afternoon shots are in a special folder. There is a good reason why you should divide this folder in two: shots needing Elements editing after ACR, and those who don't. Let's begin with the latter. Open in ACR, adjust, crop and straighten (ACR 4.2 or 4.3), then click done and go to the next file without opening Elements. A batch job will do the final steps afterwards, since your editing changes are saved in .xmp files. With the files to be further edited in Elements, you click open instead of done and take the time to edit with layers, masks, dodge and burn, specific noise reduction ... then save as jpeg in a new folder without bothering to resize or sharpen. For the keepers which will need special care afterwards, best save as .psd for further use, unless you want to start from scratch with the original raw files. Having sorted the files, the editing steps of the first shot in a folder will be kept for the following edit, provided you have set the default of ACR to 'previous conversions'. The adjustments should be minimal, except cropping and straightening which depend on each individual image. You spare a lot of time by skipping Elements editing when ACR can do the job, which may be 80% of the cases.
The next step will be to use the batch feature (process multiple files) to convert edited raw files (with their .xmp accompanying files or jpegs to the desired format for printing or for the web.
Summary:
Import from card or camera to temporary folder
Browse in organizer. Give a rating and determine categories based on editing similarities. Start rating again to be sure you are keeping only useful shots! The time to do this will be more than compensated afterwards.
Copy each category into its own folder. At this stage, try to separate files which need additonnal edits.
Those needing only ACR treatment are edited and saved ('done') in the same folder. No need to open in Elements.
Those processed in Elements are saved in a new folder.
Each folder is automatically 'batch processed' with 'process multiple files' once for printing, a second time for web. You maywant to keep the intermediate edited jpegs which can produce excellent home prints (maybe adjusting sharpening). Two resulting output folders: print and web.
Last sorting and culling for pictures to keep for web or digital frames.
Uploading files to Internet for printing
Creating web galleries and uploading
Selecting the few 'keepers' and do comprehensive editing and printing, saving as psd or Tiff. Have fun with those!