Thanks Rookie2.
rookie2 wrote:what settings did you have the SB800 on?
I would have had it set on TTL and abouot -1 2/3. Hopefully just enough to fill the shadows and light the eyes.
rookie2 wrote:BTW can you provide the basic picasa workflow you use after a day like last tuesday - its still taking me ages!!
I'm afraid I don't use Picasa. I've got a very hacky custom flow using
PS CS2.
For the record, here is what I do:
- I've got a dos batch file that creates and directory structure and copies the NEF files from the CF card. The files read from the card are placed in a NEF folder.
- I use PreviewExtractor to get the embedded JPGs from the NEF files, to make sorting and viewing them easier. Those JPGs go into a different directory.
- Then I view the JPGs and move any crap ones (if any

) to a Trash folder. Following that I move the matching NEF files to the Trash folder.
- Then I go through the reamaining images and pick the best ones. Loading them up one-by-one into
PS CS2 and tweak the ACR sliders and white balance. (I open the files as 16-bit AdobeRGB)
- In
PS I use the Shadow/Highlights sliders to bring out the light and dark areas (no too much though).
- In
PS I use smart sharpen of about 40-80% 1.2px.
- In
PS convert to sRGB and 8-bit
mode, then save the
PSD file to an Edit directory.
- When I have done all the images I am going to, then I use a hacked version of the
PS "Image Processor" script to apply my logo and save as JPG ready to upload to Smugmug.
I also find this time consuming to process images one-by-one, but it gives me the control I'm after. I also only normally do <20 images from a day, so it's not too bad.
I am currently adding to my flow to add a description and keywords to the EXIF in
PS so it will automatically appear on Smugmug. I'm also writting a perl script to detect which Lens was used and place my matching keyword into the JPG. This should hopefully cut down a bit of time on smugmug.
Daniel