My Photography Workflow

Kjwan: Shot using the Canon S95 and edited on the iPad mini using Camera+ HD

Its been a week already since the 7107 International Music Festival concluded. Aside from the festivities, I grabbed the opportunity to take a lot of pictures again. Its been a long time since I had the Canon S95 with me for an event. I just use my ever trusty iPhone 4S in taking pictures most of the time. With a concert event like this, I need to revert to the Canon S95 because of the manual controls I can change while taking pictures depending on the situation. I can also shoot in RAW which would be very helpful in post processing. For this post, I'm going to share the other things I used in capturing and editing the pictures. A lot has changed in my workflow and the reason for it is because of mobility.

In the past, after taking shots on the Canon S95 I edit the pictures on my Mac using iPhoto. I even purchased Pixelmator from the Mac App Store but I really haven't used the application in editing my pictures. It turns out I'm just fine in using iPhoto for basic editing -- color enhancement, crop and straighten are the usual things I edit on my shots. Now, with my frequent use of the iPhone 4S, I found myself less dependent on the Mac in editing my pictures. There are a lot of applications on the App Store about Photography. I tried a lot of them from the articles I read and tested them for practical usage. I even wrote on article about the applications installed on my iPhone. I have deleted some of them already and retained just some of the photography applications below.

  HDR FX Pro
  Hipstamatic
  ProCam (there's ProCam 2 already)
  SlowShutter
  Squaready

But there are two applications that really stood out in my iPhone -- Camera+ and Over. I use the editing tools in Camera+ before sharing it to my social networking sites. On the other hand, I use Over in placing a watermark on my pictures. Both applications have their iPad counterparts so I also have them on my iPad mini. Aside from the iPhone, I use the iPad mini because of its larger screen which is good for photo editing.

In summary, here's a comparison of my photography workflow before and at present.

Before
1. Shoot pictures using the Canon S95
2. Edit pictures on the Mac using iPhoto
3. Watermark pictures using Art Text 2 (here's the Lite version)
4. Share on social networking sites

At present
1. Shoot pictures using the iPhone (sometimes the S95)
2. Edit pictures on the iPhone or iPad mini using Camera+ (or Camera+ for iPad)
3. Watermark pictures using Over
4. Share on social networking sites

Between the two, my current workflow is lighter in the bag. Since I always want to pack light, I only have my S95, iPhone, iPad mini and an SD Card reader (Apple's Lightning to SD Card Camera reader). This is what works for me and I find it very efficient.