Photo Editing Workflow
How to import, edit and publish a photo using Photo Mechanic and Affinity Photo starting with a raw file.
Photo Mechanic
When importing files from the memory card using Photo Mechanic, all imported files are copied into a folder with the date the photo shoot. The files are renamed. e.g. yyyymmdd/khm-yyyymmdd-hhss-10digitnumber.nef. Later on in the post-production, the filename won't change again allowing us to locate the original RAW file anytime.
If we use HDR merge or Focus shifting merge, the resulting file will use the filename of the first shot in the sequence.
- After import, review all photos, delete low quality photos (key "t", "command + t" to select all files tagged for trash.)
- Apply star rating to photos which will be edited (1 for this website, 2 for Unsplash)
Affinity Photo
Use reveal in finder to localize the raw file to be edited. Usually, photo editing is done fast, not more than 15minutes.
- Open with Affinity Photo
- In raw persona fix noise and continue with develop
- Crop to optimize composition, keep original ratio
- Add adjustment layer curves (improve range dark/light)
- Add adjustment layer HSL (saturation)
- Merge visible
- Apply filter sharpen > high pass
- Export to jpg minimum size 3000x2000 pixels
All photos are exported to one dedicated folder. This folder is named by the year.
Publishing Photos
High quality photos are published in Unsplash.
All edited photos are published in this website:
- Add record to the website's photo database (camera, lens, camera settings, file size, title, caption, species and location)
- Upload file to Google Cloud bucket serving the CDN (IMGIX)
- Re-deploy website which will publish the new photo in the pages defined by species and location
Before a photo can be published in muuuh.com, instructions for IMGIX image rendering service may have to be modified. By default, crop instruction "entropy" is used which doesn't work well in all cases. If necessary, entropy is changed to focal point with x and y coordinates.
To learn more about how re-deploy of Muuuh's website works, visit simaec.net.