OK, first off… I was hoping to wrap this up this week… well I have, but… it turned out to be one LONG article… There’s no way that anyone will give it their full attention, I’ve struggled myself during proof reading* and I wrote the damn thing!!
(*yes despite the typos, terrible grammar and syntax, appalling paragraph usage, and a writing voice that’s all over the shop – I do actually proof read 🙂 )
Sure if this was about Lightroom it might hold your attention… But it’s not, so I’ve decided to split this into 2 parts (well 4 if you count the previous instalments!!)
Which might mean that in last week’s article, I may have mentioned something as “I’ll cover that next week” and now that will actually be NEXT week.
If you were waiting to read something that’s not here, contact me and I’ll do my best to explain it.
Anyway, last time out (click here if you missed it) I gave you an overview of most of tools that you can find in Fuji’s RFC RAW convertor.
I documented the single image editing component of the software, which seemed the easiest way to go through all the toolsets.
But more likely, you’ll have multiple images to work on; and it’s also quite likely that you’ll have tweaks and settings that’ll want too apply to multiple images.
You may very well also have base settings – as in settings that you like to apply to many images, that form a base from which you wish to begin your editing.
Does RFC have a way to work in batch mode in order to expedite our work flow?
You bet it does 🙂
So let’s start out by working in folder mode.
From the menu or the top toolbar icon, select the ‘Open Folder’ option
Browse to the folder that contains the images you wish to work on.
In my example, I have 3 RAW files – I suspect you may have more 😉 but the principle will be the same
You can work on these images one-by-one using the tools I detailed in the previous instalment.
We each have our ways of working… For me I tend to find that I have groups of images that require similar attention. For example if you’re shooting street, you stop in a location that you like, hang around, take some shots. Then move on to somewhere else and repeat. This is fairly generic, no matter where you are and what you’re shooting! At the zoo, you may take a few shots at the Lion enclosure, then move on to the reptile house. At your kid’s birthday party, you might take some shots of them playing in the garden, then some more shots when they come inside for cake.
This creates what I think of as groups. Each group might be very different in terms of subject or lighting – but the shots within each group itself – not necessarily so much.
Therefore I tend to pick an image (sometimes more) from each group – edit it somewhere close but without the final tweaks for that particular shot, then transpose those edits to the rest of the shots in that group.
So for example:
You might have a range of shots that you’re almost certain will require a specific Fuji film simulation, a base setting of sharpening or NR or a particular contrast look that you like.
So, if we had 100 shots in 2 groups – just 2 image edits can supply the BASE (not the final) for the entire range of 100 shots.
Once I have the bases set and applied – I can then review each image with the individual attention it deserves, but with the knowledge that I’ve done a fair chunk of the initial work before I even start looking at them as individual pieces.
This isn’t a RFC thing – this is how I like to work in all editing software, and they pretty much all offer this feature. And if you’re using one that doesn’t… well at least you now know that the free one from Fuji does 🙂
But let’s look at how we can implement this within RFC.
One thing that can really help us with batch processing a large amount of images is being able to categorise them. It’s pretty basic, but RFC has the ability to help us by marking images.
In the folder view, if we right click on a image you can see that we have the option to give it either a Blue, Green or Red mark.
We can decide to mark the images we wish to work on.
Once we have done this, we can use the Select Scenes for Operation control from the View menu to filter our images.
We might only be able to mark our images with coloured marks, but when it comes to filtering them we have more helpful options.
Of particular interest is the ability to filter all the images that we have edited (or not edited if you tick every box except the edited one!), or have ear marked for development.
So for example, we could break our images down into reds, greens and blues (by marking them as such), edit then in batches filtered by the colours, but finally filter only on edited to see all them together. We’re cover batch development later on.
Once we’ve done any filtering that we may wish to do in order to break our shots down into the ones that we want to work on, we need ways of editing them in the least time consuming manor.
For me, this means identifying base shot(s) that we can transpose our edits from to other images.
To begin with, select an image that you’ll edit to create the base suite of settings. Edit this image as a standalone. Once done, revert to the multi view of all of your images
Yes I know my screen shots only show 3, but the principle is the same!
Click on the single gear (ie cog) icon that’s at the top left of the screen. This changes the tools to the cloakroom toolset. The cloakroom is basically 4 clipboards that you can paste settings too and from.
In order to copy ALL the settings from your ‘base’ edited image to the ‘cloakroom’ – click the small circle to the left of where it says ‘cloakroom’
This stores the settings from the selected image, and the text changes from ‘cloakroom 1’ to the time stamp of when you saved it.
Next select the image(s) you wish to paste the settings too, and click on the appropriate cloakroom to paste the settings. These can be applied to multiple images at a time.
As you can see – there are 4 cloakrooms, so you can have 4 sets of saved settings.
But you can actually be more creative than this 🙂
If you think about it… the images themselves become “cloakrooms”
If you use all 4 cloakrooms, and paste them to some of your images, then fill up the cloakrooms with different settings, you can return to the original cloakroom settings, by highlighting an image that has these settings, then copying them back to one of the cloakrooms.
Another good use of the cloakrooms would be to quickly compare the same image with different settings. One setting in (say) cloakroom 1, another setting in cloakroom 2 – then click on each cloakroom to change the image and make your mind up about which settings to go with.
After we’ve clicked the cloakroom “clipboard” you see ALL the settings from image 1 are pasted to images 2 and 3.
Pease note that the cloakrooms will not retain their contents if you close the RFC application
Of course being able to use the cloakrooms to paste complete suites of settings between images is very helpful…
….But only if you want to completely duplicate the settings to another shot.
What about if you only want to copy some settings, for example you might be happy with the exposure and want to apply that across the board, but leave out other settings – maybe one image you’ve applied a crop, that you don’t want to carry over to other shots (or maybe you just want to apply the same crop or rotation to a selection of images that have vastly different exposures?)
There’s a way to do that too!
From the image that has the settings you want, right click on it and select Copy Development Parameters (this is also available from the edit menu)
Next, select the image(s) that you want to apply the partial paste too, right click (or again use the edit menu) and select Paste Partial of Development Parameters
From the resultant box, tick the settings that you do want to paste. Only these settings will be applied to the selected images
Being able to copy/paste settings between images ‘on the fly’ is a very powerful tool, that can save us a great deal of time in front of the screen.
But some settings we know we will use time and time again, is there a way to make permanent suites of settings for future use?
Yes – yes there is 🙂
So next time I’ll show you how to make a “GLOBAL” pre-set within RFC, along with local pre-sets for each tool.
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The X-Pro Series Content: Referenced and All In One Place
The X-Pro Series Content: A Contents Page with Page Numbers and a Brief Description
Adam Bonn Fotografia 
Interesting, I’ve even downloaded the RFC to test it following your articles . . . . .
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Thanks Jos,
If you already use LR or PS or ID etc, then RFC won’t seem like a very good tool (I like the SilkyPix paid for version though) I’ve mainly written this series because RFC gets constantly abused on the ‘net and people say it has no features… and for anyone looking for a BASIC raw convertor that has the Fuji film sims it’s worth the money (FOC)
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