general workflow questions...

yeah, this should probably be in the post-processing forum, but i am interested in the opinions of people who shoot performance, as the conditions are very dynamic, and i think it's hard to apply automation and the same adjustment to a wide variety of photos which are vastly different.

so, that said...what sort of batching/automation/ac​tions do you typically run? i must admit that i'm way under-achieving in this aspect, and i'd like to gain efficiencies where possible.

about the only batch stuff i do is to apply metatag data on the whole group of photos, cull through and delete the obvious bad ones, then select the good ones. from there, i do another round of selection, and these are the ones i deem worthy for PP.

i open all of them in ACR, then usually select all and apply 'tungsten' as the white balance. i then go through them individually, and make exposure tweaks as needed, sometimes also adjusting brightness and contrast (i tend to leave everything else to the defaults i've set).

once all the images are in photoshop, i should really write a simple action to add a curves layer to each one, but what i've done is to create one, make an S curve, then drag/drop to all the open files. i can then tweak that layer as needed for each image. after that, i've found that i don't really do all that much other than cropping, cloning if necessary, or some burning (maybe also adjust some colors via Channel Mixer...either tone down the red channel, or do a B&W conversion)...i then save the PSD as a full-size 16 bit file w/ layers intact. now i'm ready to resize, convert to 8 bit, and sharpen if needed, saving as jpg.

any hints on stuff i can do to make my life easier? one other thing i might do is to use Adobe RGB colorspace for all PSD edits, then when i convert to jpg go to sRGB.

there's got to a better solution, so i'm curious to hear what you all do, or if you have certain actions you rely upon a lot. i did get a few Fred Miranda actions (mono and duo-tone conversions), but i don't like that it flattens the layers. i suppose i can edit these actions, no?

I import all images from CF cards usingImageIngester. This gives me a backup on an external HDD as well, adds 'default' IPTC, and opens the imported files as a catalog in iView.

In iView I add some more specific metadata, and make a first selection, filtering out all crappy and 'so-so' images.
I then make a second (and third, fourth, whatever) selection, untill I have enough (not too much) images, without (too much) duplication.

These go into DPP, and start of with tungsten WB, sharpness 3, all other parameters '0', Color style 'neutral', and since DPP 3, a bit of NR.

Then any of these settings can get changed depending on image
It's also fairly common to set everything, adjust exposure, make a copy of the CR2 (affix 'A'), set exposure back. That way I have two versions of the file for blending exposures.
I usually convert to 8bpc AdobeRGB jpg or 16bpc WideGamutRGB tiff depending on useage.

These files go into PSCS2 or 3Beta.

Almost no automation in PS (I have a few actions for sharpening, NR and restoring clipped channels, but use them less since I shoot Raw).
I tweak the image as needed, save a layered .psd file. Then I run Manyk SRS for resizing and use an action to convert to sRGB and 'save as' a jpg, quality 9, progressive 3, with ICC profile in the right folder.

Images that need a watermark, get one by using the image processor, and an edited version of DrBrowns 'Digital Watermark Branding'.

I make a web gallery using iView again.

As a final step, I back everything up to external HDD (selected images) and DvD (everything).

I treat all my photos individually - those that I choose to publish (on a web site for instance) anyway. I typically Postprocess about 5-8 photos per concert. Only thing I batch process is conversion to presentation format (for example, to web-sized images).

I see almost all other choices as creative ones that require my control. I'd never for instance consider "batch-changing" color balance (except maybe to change the starting point for the real tweaking).

I import my images from my 2gb Sandisk Ultra II through my Sandisk Extreme USB Reader straight into Aperture. Then, I auto stack my images. After that, I sort through every image and give it a rating. Anything that needs an adjustment is given some. Anything that needs processing can be exported straight into Photoshop and saved back into Aperture. When I'm finished, I can sort my images by Rating and export anything I want with a watermark at the click of a button. Everything also gets backed up to an External drive through the 1-click Vault function of Aperture. As you can see, I love this program!