The second half of this evenings meeting was a very comprehensive instruction by Martin Tomes showing us how he deals with his digital images from downloading the camera's card to having it ready for printing. Sadly time did not allow him to show us fully final preparations for printing.
Martin downloads his images from a picture taking session into a folder in LlIGHTROOM where he firstly converts all his raw files into DNG so that they can be read in future by all past and present manipulation programmes. The very latest version of say Photoshop CS4 is not necessarily able to read all files from the very latest cameras until they bring out conversion software which you can then download. All versions of Photoshop can read any DNG file.
Martin then showed us how he labels files with the date in year/month/day format. He also tags them with useful catagories such as location; subject; sunset; and then 'stacks' similar shots taken with different exposures for instance. He checks through and deletes any 'rubbish' shots, (but Martin be aware that these shots could be competition winners!!)
Then Martin showed us many of the different actions that you can carry out in Lightroom to change and enhance images such as correcting exposure or bringing detail into shadow or highlight areas etc. Also how you can add Filter effects, spot removal and even carrying out the same action on a batch of pictures that all require the same correction.
As usual with Martin, his presentation was well organised,coherent and professional, quite unlike mine which preceeded it!!