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I have access to the below software and I use all of them at various times. I do not have a specific workflow and would like to start following one.

  1. Aperture
  2. LightRoom
  3. Photoshop CS5

The general process that I follow is this:

  1. Import Pictures to Aperture library.
  2. "Sometimes" make some changes in Lightroom. The reason I don't always use lightroom is that my library is in Aperture and I don't want to import everything into Lightroom again.
  3. Most of the processing I do is on PS. I like to do adjustments on Layers.

How can I improve my workflow? I shoot JPEG.

chills42
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Vaishak Suresh
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  • None of these are "exact" duplicates, but all cover the same basic information. http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/14761/how-to-improve-my-current-workflow – chills42 Apr 16 '12 at 12:46
  • http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/2223/what-workflow-do-you-follow-for-managing-your-photography – chills42 Apr 16 '12 at 12:46
  • http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/3865/what-workflow-should-i-use-for-processing-raw-photos-in-lightroom – chills42 Apr 16 '12 at 12:46
  • @chills42 Thanks for the information. Please feel free to close if you find this redundant. – Vaishak Suresh Apr 16 '12 at 12:49
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    Don't shoot JPEG, that would be a good start! – Simon Apr 17 '12 at 16:22

3 Answers3

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The biggest step you could take is to commit to either Aperture or Lightroom. These applications are both trying to fill the same space in a photographer's workflow, and they each work best if they are the primary tool that you use. By committing to a single application for importing, organizing and processing your images, you will be able to put the full features of the application to use and get the value out of your investment.

Since you also use Photoshop, I'd actually be leaning towards Lightroom, as it has a clean integration between the two, but the choice is yours.

chills42
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I recommend, as a good starting place, Scott Kelby's book on Lightroom. He goes into everything you're looking to standardize and get better on from importing to processing to cataloging. The basic principles are transferable to pretty much any software package. They all work very similarly.

But since you're using a lot of Aperture, then I recommend Scott Bourne's free class on Aperture as a good starting place.

Lastly, in order to get any real benefit from Aperture, Lightroom or other I recommend shooting in raw format. You can certainly make use of these with jpeg only but they offer so much more capability with raw files.

nwcs
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If this question could be answered, there would be exactly one processing software and the market and it would work on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android!

Seriously, processing is a very vague step and different software do different things well. You will not get a satisfying answer until you figure out what you need the software for. Just like choosing tool to fix your house, you can't until you know what has to be done.

What others have mentioned is still valid. It is always harder to be half-committed than fully. If you use Lightroom, follow its natural workflow. The same with Aperture. Other software such as Bibble (AfterShot now) and Photoshop are far more flexible in terms of workflow, so you need more effort to define your own.

Itai
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    Which is precisely why I asked "How can I improve my workflow?" and not "What is the best software". I understand it is a vague process and want to know How I can best optimize my workflow. What @Chills42 has said makes sense to me. – Vaishak Suresh Apr 17 '12 at 12:05
  • Actually you did ask the former :) That's what I see as the question at the top of this page. – Itai Apr 18 '12 at 00:01
  • That is why it is the title and not the question itself. Anyway, thanks for your input. – Vaishak Suresh Apr 18 '12 at 11:07