General PWP Workflow

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AHuntley
Posts: 51
Joined: September 1st, 2012, 3:32 pm
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General PWP Workflow

Post by AHuntley »

Hi All,

Though I've used PWP (off-n-on) for many years, I've always felt that it's a much more powerful editing tool than how I've typically used it. For example, I've never understood widgets or how/why I'd want to use them. :)

Therefore, I'm curious how the typical user makes use of this program, if you feel so inclined to reply. My workflow is pretty basic--open an image, apply transformations (with and without masks), compare the new image window against the prior one to make sure that I'm pleased with the result (rinse-n-repeat, as needed), then I close the prior window because I'm moving forward and don't anticipate going back to it. I will, however, typically save mask windows because I may want to use one later on. I have held on to all the intermediary windows a few times, but never once did I need to refer back to an old window. Therefore, at the end when I'm done editing I usually have a single image window open and mask windows, if created. I rarely save the mask windows, if I'm fully satisfied with the final image.

Am I missing a major point of using PWP? What is your typical workflow?

Thanks!
Regards,
AlanH
Marpel
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Re: General PWP Workflow

Post by Marpel »

Alan,

Not sure whether you are familiar with Photoshop or not, but widgets (actually Batch Workflow in which widgets are used) follow the same philosophy as Photoshop "Actions". In PWP, you can set up and then repeatedly use a Batch Workflow in which you choose the type of transformation(s) you wish to include for various, and often common, operations such as sharpening, brightness and contrast adjustments, curves and colour balancing, among others. Each operation within a workflow is a Widget and each Widget setting can be changed, or the widget deleted or added in the workflow at will. Once a workflow is established, you can save it for use on other images and, once implemented on those images, each receives the same treatment (although as stated, the settings can be changed to be image specific). This is convenient if you do the same set of operations on multiple images and/or those operations are many. And you can set up a number of different workflows if you wish.

One of the benefits of a workflows, if you manually run through a number of operations, that build on each other, then discover you should have done A instead of B in the first operation, you can simply revise the particular widget within the workflow and run it again, rather than doing the whole thing manually again.

Having said that, if you process only a single or a few images at a time and make few changes, a workflow may not be worth it for you. Myself, although I process quite a few images, I don't make the same changes to each, so have only used workflows on an intermittent basis. I also use Photoshop but only use a couple Actions. Most processing is one off.

As to the use/saving of masks, I use masks an awful lot and find the only time I want to re-use the mask, is the time I did not save it. So I save quite a bit and keep the mask for awhile until I am absolutely certain I will not need it (although, to be honest, I probably have hundreds of masks sitting in folders, some of which are years old). I, routinely, generate and use up to twenty masks during the processing of an image. If you haven't run into any issues with not saving intermediate copies of images or masks, then I suspect you are not suffering in that area.

I would give workflows/widgets a try though. They are pretty easy to understand once you give it a go.

Hope this helps,

Marv
AHuntley
Posts: 51
Joined: September 1st, 2012, 3:32 pm
What is the make/model of your primary camera?: unknown

Re: General PWP Workflow

Post by AHuntley »

Hi Marv,

I've been a PS user for 16 years so, yes, I'm very familiar with how actions work and how to build them. Thanks for the detailed explanation of widgets; I kind of had an idea that what you described is what they did and how they are used. Since I don't process batches of image files, I never really looked into their use. My general editing workflow is a single image at a time. Though I shoot quite a bit, very few images make it to the editing process and out to a print. I try to print only winners and leave the "also rans" sitting on my hard drive. I guess that's why I work the way I do in PWP...I'm only interested in moving forward. Once I decide a new edit is what I want, the prior version is generally useless to me. Don't work that much different in PS! I may have several layers going at one time but I'll eventually flatten the file, and then move on to other edits with new layers, then flatten, etc. I have a few PS files were I maintained all the layers, but it's not common for me.

I guess the reason I posted this thread is because I was kind of thinking out loud... :) I've been an Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber for about a year now, but I don't feel that I make that much use of LR and PS; even at the $10US per month. I mainly use Capture One Pro for all my raw conversions and I own licenses to a few different editors such as PWP, PhotoLine, Affinity Photo, and ON1 Photo 10. Therefore, due to my relatively low usage of the Adobe products I'm trying to decide if I should let my subscription go. Not asking anyone to decide for me... :) I have always really liked PWP--it's a very easy to use and responsive program--but lately I'm finding PWP 7 crashing on me more than IMO it should. To be clear, I've also had PS CC 2015 crash on me; just not as often.

Anyway, just rambling again...thanks, again, for your input.
Regards,
AlanH
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