Sorting images in DPP - my workflow

I have evolved my own quirky way of handling RAWs in DPP which might be of interest to somebody and maybe even an aid. First off I have to point out that I am today strictly an amateur so I'm not handling vast numbers of shots. My serious stuff is mostly ‘scapes – landscapes, seascapes, urbanscapes. Open, detailed shadows are important to me so I try to expose to the right. OTOH, since DPP has no means for highlight recovery, I have to be careful not to go too far to the right.To this end I bracket everything. Memory is cheap – I usually carry 5.5 Gigs with me – and under or overexposures never make it to the computer.

The initial sorting, choosing the best exposure, I do with DPP’s thumbnail page, in the mode which shows the histogram. I need information about the RAW data, but there’s a catch here. DPP creates the thumbnail and its adjacent histogram according to the conversion parameters set for that file. Initially these are, of course, the parameters set in the camera. But my XT can’t set Picture Styles, so DPP defaults to Standard. Standard increases contrast and saturation and sets a relatively low white point, all of which means it can easily clip highlights and it is definitely not representative of the RAW exposure. (The problem is the same as that of the camera’s histogram being inflated by the conversion to jpg). Also, although my camera is set to the lowest contrast and saturation settings, DPP sets these parameters one spot up from the minimum.

The solution, however, is easy. I have made and saved a recipe in which the Picture Style is Neutral, the contrast slider is all the way to the left and saturation is -4. One more thing – by shooting a grey card in sunlight at different hours of the day I have determined that (for my camera) a WB temperature of 4700 is a good starting point, so that’s in the recipe as well. This gives me an RGB luminance histogram which has been only minimally expanded and is as close to the RAW data as I can hope to get.

My workflow is to open DPP and first create a new folder on my HD, then load the recipe, open the folder of new shots on the card, select all of them and apply the recipe to them. I mark the ones I want to save, select them and hit “copy”. I then go to the new folder – when I exit the card’s folder I’m asked if I want to save the changes and I click “No to all” – and hit paste and I get all the chosen files with DPP’s default settings. Fast and easy.

I just upload all the files into a folder, do an archive DVD copy and then open DPP and then use the quick check tool to select which ones I want to use giving them a check mark based on
1- I know I am going to use
2- The shot is acceptable
3- The shot has something I might want to play with later
none - The shot is unacceptable

Then I view sort check mark 1
and then select one shot, set WB, save receipe and copy to all other selected images with same lighting condition. then I Save receipe to files. Then I use the trimming tool to crop all of the images as need.

depending on what needs to be done I batch process to jpeg at that point or I send to PS CS2 one at a time as needed for further editing.

Works real good for me right now.
I do about 1000-3000 images in a set.