Workflow question - keep finished files as PSD or DNG?

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Graeme Brown

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I'm a full time pro wedding photographer, using Lightroom & CS4 for a few years. Last year my workflow was: Edit in Lightroom (colour and exposure mostly); output as PSD; tweak PSD in Photoshop. I would save the finished files as PSD and then produce other files (web sized JPEGS or full size JPEGS etc) by running a batch job using Photoshop as necessary.
This year I have been turned on to the benefits of DNG, so I am now converting my Raw files to DNG at the start of the process. I'm trying to keep everything in Lightroom, so this year rather than exporting from Lightroom and then going through the whole job again in Photoshop I have been editing in Photoshop from within Lightroom. This leaves me at the end of the process with a mixed set of DNG's and TIFF's. I then have two options - convert the TIFF's to DNG and keep the DNG files as my 'Master Set'; or convert all the files to PSD and use that as my master set.
DNG's might be slightly smaller and more future proof, and they seem to load faster in Bridge when browsing (inbuilt preview unlike DNG?), but I can't make my mind up which way to go. Not worried about loading files in anything other than Photoshop or Lightroom.
I guess workflow has been done to death here, but I'd appreciate thoughts on this specific question.
 
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DNGs are an alternative to raw files - not to your PSDs.

See how much you can accomplish purely in LR. The finished job would then consist of DNGs for most images, a PSD/TIF and a DNG for those images that need extra Photoshop work. If you create these PSD/TIFs from LR by choosing Edit in PS, then the PSD will be stacked with its DNG. You can then create as many JPEGs as you need, when you need them - using LR, not a PS batch.

Some other points. In this workflow, Bridge is more or less irrelevant. Never convert TIFs to DNGs.

John
 
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When you do have to export out of LR to edit in an external editor like Photoshop I would recommend TIFFs over PSDs as they can be read by far more applications. Adobe actually recommend TIFFs over PSD now also. There is nothing you can't do in TIFF that you can do in PSD so you are not losing anything.
 
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I think PSDs are pretty much a dead end file format used mainly by Adobe pixel editing applications and little else outside of Adobe. TIFs on the other hand are a universal standard format usable by almost every other application. My preference is to stay with DNGs as a RAW input format and only use TIFs if I need to Edit-in another application like PS (as John has already suggested.) My final product always is the DNG with the filter adjustments retained in the XMP section of the DNG. About 9'% of all my final images can be created completely in LR. The other ~1'% may require layers, or filter adjustments that are not in LR. for these, I use the Edit in Option to create a 16 bit TIF and preserve the results in the LR catalog.
If I need a copy of the final image version(s) for print, CD, Slideshow or Web, I create these in a export and these are never catalogued in LR or copy even retained on my local device. If I need another - print, CD slideshow or Web images, I re-run the export. So, in the end, I only have the DNG master with all the adjustments contained in snapshots stored in the XMP section of the DNG. For that rare 1'% that need extra work, I have a TIF stacked with the DNG.

FWIW, my camera writes DNG RAW files instead of a proprietary format like NEF or CR2. The DNG master becomes the repository for all my adjustment to that image.
 
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Agree with the point about TIF rather than PSD - I just didn't want to open that can of worms!

John
 
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I'll throw the cat amongst the pigeons - thought about archiving finished files as jpegs, keeping the dng's too, of course? For the volume wedding photographers work with, a folder full of tiffs adds up pretty quickly for hard drive space, and for pictures which will never become poster size, a full quality jpeg isn't that bad an option.
 
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I do keep an off-site archive of full size JPEGs, but I sometimes get asked for large files (eg 4'x3' canvas prints) so I want to keep my working archive (err, if you know what I mean) as high quality as possible. I guess it makes sense to keep the finished DNG files, and for those which have been edited externally to Lightroom to keep them as TIFF's. TIFF's are fine, but they're huge. I think the root of my question was should I keep my edited files as TIFF's or convert them back to DNG (smaller & faster). The consensus seems to be leave them as TIFF, but if converting that was was a bad thing then I'm surprised Lightroom allows you to do this.
 
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TIFF's converted to DNG probably won't be smaller and faster as it only changes the wrapper. Once it's a TIFF, it's no longer raw data.
 
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[quote author=Victoria Bampton link=topic=9''6.msg6'838#msg6'838 date=12645'134']
TIFF's converted to DNG probably won't be smaller and faster as it only changes the wrapper. Once it's a TIFF, it's no longer raw data.
[/quote]

The speed advantage I was thinking of is not having to wait for a preview to render in a DNG, which makes browsing in Bridge much faster, at least it seems that way.
 
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