Five Secrets of Tethered Shooting
1. Use Bridge as your workflow software. Set up the shoot using your camera manufacturers software and choose a capture folder. Next, open Adobe CS2 Bridge and point it to the capture folder. Volia! Previews are faster than in DPP and more accurate (easier to adjust) than in Leaf.
2. Use Bridge’s Camera Raw processor instead of Photoshop. You can set your Bridge preferences to open ACR inside of Bridge instead of Photoshop. Check the box under the Advanced preference category that says “Double-click edits Camera Raw setting in Bridge”. You can also use command R to open in Bridge. You want things as streamlined as possible when capturing large digital files so there is no reason to run Bridge and Photoshop when you can accomplish the same thing with only one program open.
3. Use Camera Default setting to correct images as they load. Once you shoot a gray card and get your exposure set, you can apply those adjustments to all the incoming images by making it the new Camera Default Setting. You do this by clicking the small triangle next to the “Settings” pull down menu in the Camera RAW dialog box. Now all incoming images shot with the same camera as the test shot will load into Bridge with the correct settings.
4. Lock settings to the raw files. There is one catch to playing fast and loose with the Camera Default setting. If you set a new Camera Default for another scene, it will change your previous images as well. To avoid this, you want to lock the settings into place so that they can’t easily be changed. Select the images, navigate to the Edit>Apply Camera Raw Settings>Camera Raw Defaults. This will force ACR to write the sidecar file using the current Camera Defaults. Notice the small circular symbol in the bottom right corner of each thumbnail. This tells you that the image now has a sidecar file. The adjustments are now written to this sidecar file and will be used regardless of any Camera Default settings change.
5. Convert to DNG. I want my exposure adjustments and the starring/labeling attached directly to the RAW file. Since the RAW file is never touched by most image editing programs, this would seem impossible, right? Adobe’s Digital Negative file format to the rescue. It is a universal open standard that contains the raw file and also allows the sidecar information to be encapsulated within the DNG file itself. Roll your processing settings and starring into a DNG file for archiving by choosing “Digital Negative” as my export option.
Most of us have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into learning and using Photoshop. It is the tool of professional photographers - the standard. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the time or inclination to learn every manufacturers kludgy idea of workflow software. Additionally, most of us shoot with several different brands of cameras and need to choose something to standardize on. If you don’t, you are forced to become a software expert instead of a photographer.
In addition to being a familiar tool, Adobe CS2 is much faster than any other workflow tool. On our Quad processor Mac tower we can batch process a TIFF and a JPG in around 6 seconds. Try that with the Canon, Leaf or Phase software and you’ll be more in the neighborhood of 24 to 45 seconds. This might not sound like a big time difference until you have to process 1000 images before you can go to bed.
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5 Responses to “Five Secrets of Tethered Shooting”
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October 13th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
_Thanks_ for the article and tips. One quick question… How do you get the images to display as enlarged previews as images are being shot? Is there a script for Bridge that will automatically select the newest image in the folder?
October 14th, 2006 at 7:13 am
The large preview image in the Bridge window doesn’t update when a new image is added. We either hit the next arrow button throughout the day or use our Griffin iMate knob to accomplish the same thing. If you were trying to shoot and manage your computer at the same time this could be a pain but since we are operating the computer for our clients it isn’t that big of a problem. We have tried scripting Bridge to change focus and it hasn’t worked very well. I am hoping the next version of Bridge will fix this issue.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Another question, as far as the gray card, do you suggest that over a macbeth color checker? and if so, any specific gray card you suggest?
November 21st, 2006 at 8:50 am
I think the color checker is over kill, at least for 90% of the shoots I have been on. We use the WhiBal grey card. It is certified as bein color acurate, and is actually quite afordable compared to a Macbeth Color Checker.
However we do use the color checker charts for profiling our cameras, but that is about the only time I have ever whipped it out.
December 10th, 2006 at 12:08 am
IeriWinner_45
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