What is Workflow

What is actually meant by 'Workflow' its a term that seems to be used a lot on these forums and appears to have some significant differences between different apps.

My understanding was that is would just a way of describing how an individual would approach the task of editing their photos and they would follow a similar procedure for each one, such as crop, colour balance, exposure......etc in a specific order.

So why do some comments seem to imply that the applications control the workflow and this seems to make a difference to which application is used. Surely if all applications are capable of same or similar tasks and adjustments then the workflow is governed by the individual user not the application ?

TIA
Birderman

It is because of the difference between applications that are called "pixel editors" and those that are "parametric", i.e. "non-destructive". In pixel editors each edit changes the image data directly and therefore the order in which edits are done (the workflow) can be important because a later step can be affected by what was done earlier. In parametric editors the edits affect only a smaller display version, not the original image data. Simultaneously the edit settings are recorded in memory or in a database and it is only at the end, when a new image file is created, that the edits are applied to the image data. In a parametric editor the workflow, as performed at the end, is fixed by the program designers, so because earlier actions by the user are only the recording of instructions it makes no difference in what order he sets the sliders.

In addition to what Elie describes in the editing process, you can also include all the various tasks you comonly do with photos as part of your workflow, such as organizational tasks and outputting for things such as the Web, for clients, printing, etc.

And, this is where workflow can be very much affected by the applications you use and the habits you form of "how you approach and carry out your work". In fact, you may have several apps that do different tasks that you piece together as part of your workflow, or maybe one "main" app that does most or all of what you commonly do -- whichever approach you take, you can benefit from taking a look at what you are doing and forming an efficient approach that will go on to define your workflow.