I love PureRAW’s denoising, but I’ve been struggling to smoothly integrate it into my workflow. So I was wondering how everyone else’s workflows look.
Namely, I’m confused about how to handle the de-moisaced raws produced by PureRAW, and the original raw files.
I would much prefer to keep the original raw files, since de-mosaicing is a destructive process, along with the fact that (even with DxO’s raw compression) the processed raws are a good bit larger. I could keep both, but that would be wildly inefficient in terms of storage.
Ideally I could load the processed versions into LR, and then delete them afterwards — but that approach both takes a decent extra bit of effort, and it involves complicating my folder structure quite a bit more.
First step for me is cull - delete all double ups and keep only the best RAWs. Storage feels much less wasted once you delete 3 out of 4 of the original RAWs (and jpegs). Then PR6 the rest, and keep your original RAWs for posterity.
Output the PR6 dng to the same folder as the RAW with a distinctive suffix on the file name - I just use -PR6.dng. Then edit the DNGs and output to JPEG once youre happy with them, retaininig PR6 in the filename, eg -PR6.jpg.
The existence of a -PR6.jpg file in the same folder as the RAWs, can be used as a kind of marker or reminder of, ‘this is the edit I was happy with’ which gives you closure for that picture, and any remaining RAWs or DNGs that don’t have a matching -PR6.jpg file, indicate that you still haven’t finished editing those ones.
This approach allows me to leave my editing at any time, come back weeks later if I want, and I know where I was up to. And I can jump between projects or folders without having to remember where I was up to on the last project.