Taking and managing photographs while
you’re on the road doesn’t mean having to compromise on image quality. Here’s
how I handle event-coverage assignments that involve publishing JEPGs to the
client’s social network sites during the event itself and delivering RAW files
to the client after the assignment.
My usual hardware setup includes a Canon
EOS 60D (go.macworld.com/eos60d) with an assortment of lenses; an iPad
mini (16GB model); and a Lighting SD Card Reader. I have iPhoto for iOS and
Photo Stream for iOS on the iPad, and at home I use Aperture or iPhoto on my
Mac.
Canon
EOS 60D
I prefer working with the Canon 60D because
it accommodates this workflow easier. In its menu, I configure the 60D to shoot
RAW+JPEG; with that setting in place, the 60D records both a RAW version and a
JPEG version of the image when I take a picture. The RAW files are 5184 by 3456
pixels; as I said, I use them for final delivery of content to the client. For
the JPEGs, I use fine-quality S, which produces 2594-by-1728-pixel files which
is plenty of resolution for publishing online.
Uploading to the iPad
Once I’ve shot a few images, I want to
share them online quickly. First, I make sure that my iPad is connected to the
internet via Wi-Fi, and that my Photo Stream is turned on (Settings ª iCloud ª Photo
Stream ª My Photo Stream).
To transfer images from the camera to the
iPad, I remove the SD Card from the Canon and connect it to the iPad mini using
the Lighting SD Card Reader. The iPad will see both the RAW and the IPEG files
and label them as ‘RAW+JPEG’. At his early stage, you can’t separate those
formats.
Selecting the Shots
I choose the shots that I want to upload by
tapping them and then tapping the blue Import button. The iPad asks me
whether I want to import all of the photos or just the ones I’ve selected; I
make sure it knows to import only the selected shots. The software then copies
both versions of the image to the iPad. However, it also warns me that multiple
formats have been imported and that Photo Stream will upload only one version
of each. That’s what I want, because Photo Stream uploads the JPEG version by
default.
Once the upload is complete, the iPad asks
if I want to keep or delete the files on the memory card. It’s important to
keep them because I’ll revisit the images when I’m back home and working on my
Mac.
Photo
Stream uploads the JPEG version by default
After waiting for a minute or so, I tap the
Photo Stream tab to check on the images I’ve copied from my camera. If
they’re there and they should be – I’m in business.
By storing those pictures in my Photo
Stream, I can remove the big RAW files and JPEGs from the Camera Roll on the
iPad; Apple stores the pictures for me. I tap the Photos tab and then
tap Edit in the upper right corner, tap the images that I want to
remove, and then tap the red Delete button in the upper left corner.
This action removes both the RAW and the JPEG versions of the shots from my
Camera Roll, freeing up the space they had occupied on the iPad. (If you don’t
have a Wi-Fi connection at the moment, don’t worry. Wait until you do, and then
delete the pictures from your Camera Roll.)
Now it’s time to move over to iPhoto for
iOS, which can communicate with my pictures in iCloud. The JPEG versions of my
recently uploaded pictures are available in the blue Photo Stream album in my
iPhoto for iOS library. I tap the Photo Stream album to open it, and
then I scroll down to access the shots I need.
After some quick image editing, I tap the
share button and upload the photos to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever
the client wants. Alternatively, I use the Open In command to send the
photos to Dropbox or to another location. With that, it’s time to go back and
take some more pictures.
The reason I don’t like to keep RAW files
on my iPad is that each RAW file from my Cano 61D occupies approximately 21MB
of space. In contrast, each JPEG, configured in the camera as Fine/Small, takes
up about 1.3MB of memory. So if I were to leave just the JPEGs on my iPad, I
could accommodate 76 images in 100MB of storage.
After the shoot is over
Starting
with iPhoto for iOS, you can share your image files with a variety of social
networks just by tapping the Share button
When the shoot is over, I head home to my
Mac for postproduction. I still have all of those RAW+JPEGs sitting on my SD
Cards, so I open Aperture and connect an SD Card to the Mac. In the Import
dialog box, I confirm that the RAW+JPEG Pairs option is enabled. If it
isn’t, I click the Import Settings pop-up menu and select it.
I select RAW Files Only from the
Import pop-up menu. Then I bring in all the images from my various SD Cards.
When Aperture asks if I want to keep or delete the memory card’s files, I
choose Keep: For the moment, those files are my backups. Once I’ve run
the Vault in Aperture, or archived the library via Time Machine, I can clear
the memory card.
If you use iCloud, as I do, for this
workflow, plenty of images will be flowing through your Photo Stream. The
capacity is 1000 of your latest images. I recommend that you set up Aperture or
iPhoto to archive your Photo Stream; that way, as older images are pushed off,
you still have access to them.
If you use Aperture, go to Preferences ª Photo
Stream, and check the boxes next to My Photo
Stream and Automatic Import. Since I use Aperture for my everyday
work, I prefer to have iPhoto serve as my iCloud archive.
Workflow variations
You could shoot in just JPEG or RAW format,
if doing so suits your style of working. If you’re a JPEG-only shooter, the
process is simpler: Take your pictures, copy the ones you want to the iPad,
have fun with the selected few, and – when you get home upload everything on
the memory cards to your Mac.
RAW shooters who don’t capture many frames
can bypass the RAW+JPEG workflow and go with RAW. The iPad will see your files
and let you play with them and you’ll upload the RAW files to your Photo
Stream. But your iPad’s free memory will diminish rapidly.
For photographers like me, however, who
shoot a lot of pictures and want to share them online with an iPad, and later
have access to high-quality versions of the files, this RAW+JPEG workflow
provides maximum flexibility.
