[Digikam-users] RAW workflow and tags

[davidvincentjones]

Leonardo;

In my work-flow I have moved away from 8 bit data so The gimp is off my list
of processes.
Not as comprehensive is CinePaint that I only use if I am pushed into doing
'local adjustments'.
For the rest .. cropping, sharpening, etc .. I use DK all the way.

Batch processing in DK is still a problem in my version (it crashes) but I
am sure that will be fixed in short order.

David


Leonardo Giordani wrote:
> 
> Hi all digiKam users,
> 
> first of all I wish to say that digiKam is a really good program that
> helps me 
> a lot in my photographic work.
> 
> I want to share with you the workflow I follow in managing my photos, to
> share 
> and discuss with you some thoughts about it and how digiKam can help us in 
> this.
> 
> Since I work with a digital reflex I'm mostly interested in the management
> of 
> the RAW conversions. Since I own many photos I'm interested also in
> tagging.
> (I'm using digiKam 0.9x.)
> 
> My workflow by now is:
> 
> 1 Download all RAW photos with digiKam in albums automatically named
> basing on 
> date
> 2 Delete very bad ones
> 3 Choose the best ones and copy them in another album
> 4 Process each chosen photo with UFRaw (creating a .ufraw file)
> 5 Batch processing .ufraw files (creating .tif file)
> 6 Process each TIFF with The Gimp (sharpening, saturation, crop, etc)
> 7 Batch converting .tif in .jpeg with digiKam
> 8 Tagging JPEG
> 
> Periodically I backup original RAW, chosen RAW with .ufraw and TIFFs on
> DVDs.
> 
> There are some point where I'm not at ease with this workflow: I just list 
> them, being conscious that probably that are a consequence of a wrong 
> approach of mine; but perhaps they expose issues that can be fixed in 
> digiKam.
> 
> For each photo I have a RAW file, a .ufraw, a TIFF file and a JPEG file. 
> Sometimes I have more than one TIFF per RAW, for example when there are 
> exposition issues (I develop a .hi.tif and a .lo.tif and then merge them
> with 
> The Gimp). Having all these files in the same directory/album is not good 
> because:
> 
>  * TIFF preview is slow (can be fixed by a powerful computer, but is
> always 
> much slower the JPEG or RAW preview)
>  * Seeing the same photo in 3 versions is not useful
>  * Multiple TIFFs can be named with various suffixes, which are not always 
> visible since some file names are truncated because of length (e.g. 
> 20090503-101323-000059.cr2)
>  * ufraw files are not understood by digiKam (it does not show them)
> 
> So one question is: would it be useful and possible (I'm going to ask 
> developers too) to embed a WORKFLOW in digiKam, so that I simply see one 
> object per photo, that object representing all files that belong to that 
> photo (i.e. RAW, TIFF, JPEG, .ufraw, .txt, etc)?
> 
> Tagging is also a problem: if I tag RAW photos than I have to tag TIFFs
> and 
> JPEGs again, with an high probabilty of forgetting tags (already happened 
> many times). Well, than it is really boring :)
> By now I only tag JPEGs, but tagging RAWs and TIFFs is useful: sometimes I 
> have not the time of processing RAWs and when I am looking for a
> particular 
> subject I would see this RAW photos too. I solved this by using three tags 
> (RAW, TIFF and JPEG), but this is a nightmare since I must tag each photo 
> basing on the format, which means a lot of work and a lot of errors.
> 
> I think digiKam lacks a WORKFLOW view of its objects. For example: I
> cannot 
> simply click on a photo and see if I already converted it to TIFF (and
> with 
> which program) or I already processed it in a particular step (for example 
> sharpening). Moreover: I follow a certain workflow, others can have
> different 
> needs, so it could be interesting to be able to define a personal flow or
> set 
> of steps.
> 
> Another example: I cannot only view JPEGs of each objects (now I exploit
> this 
> by using three tags - JPEG, TIFF and RAW - but it is not the best
> solution).
> Or for example I cannot simply list all photos that have not yet been 
> converted from RAW to TIFF to continue a previously stopped work.
> Or what about a program that saves strange files to record what has been
> done 
> on an image: ufraw files are this, another program that can be mentioned
> is 
> hugin, which saves a file with the description of the paramentes used to 
> create an image.
> 
> I try to define more precisely my idea of assisted workflow:
> I define a set of steps linking them with a particular digiKam action or
> an 
> external program:
>  * "RAW->ufraw": ufraw <file.RAW>
>  * "ufraw->TIFF": ufraw-batch *.ufraw
>  * "TIFF processing": gimp <file.tif>
>  * TIFF->JPEG: digiKam internal
> Then I click on an image and a popup menu appears with only the first step 
> available; I select it and ufraw is run on the RAW image.
> 
> Well, sorry if my thoughts seems stange or stupid; I'm experiencing these 
> limitations in my work with digiKam (and other OS softwares) and since I 
> don't know if they are shared and solved by you I just tried to identify a 
> solution.
> 
> Thank you for your answers in advance
> 
> Leonardo Giordani
> 
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> 
> 

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