Digital Workflow

I think the ideal digital workflow is to:

• capture essentially all of the illumination information from the scene being shot,
• get that information represented with high accuracy and high precision in a digital file, and then
• post process that file to express the photographers artistic intent and to map the picture down to the limited gamut and range of the presentation media that will be used.

Unfortunately, both engineering and economic considerations keep us from following this ideal scheme all of the time, or even very frequently. However, I think that keeping this ideal in mind helps us to craft the necessary compromises wisely and with minimal impact.

This approach stands in strong contrast to the approaches taken by many digital photographers who still follow practices inherited from the limitations of film, for example, paying great attention to exposure, using filters, considering that the best post processing is none at all, etc., etc.