Section 12.5. Saving a Digital

12.5. Saving a Digital "Positive"

Regardless of how you decide to share your final images with the world, Once you've done all this work you've learned about in this book, you'll want to save final image that you've so carefully created.

NOTE

You can do this for a single image, if it's one you've been spending a great deal of time on. If you've been doing more automated processing on groups of images, you can use the Image processor to do it for a whole group.

Here's the process for flattening and converting a single image to TIFF:

1. Save the last version of the image, preserving all of its workstages in layers. Be sure to add the suffix "fnl" (for final) to the file name. Be sure the color profile is still Adobe RGB 1998. Also, place a copy in a folder you've created called Temp for Backup. Whenever that folder contains enough data to fill a CD or DVD (whichever covers the volume of work you've done in the two or three days), back it up to CD.

2. Either choose LayerFlatten Image or go to the Layers Palette menu and choose Flatten Image.

3. Save As. The Save As dialog will appear. Choose TIFF from the Format menu. Use the Save As Menu to navigate to the Temp for Backup Folder you created earlier. Create a new folder named after client code, subject/location, and date and open it. Click the Save button.

Here's the Digital Positive process for flattening and converting a group of images to TIFF:

1. Once you've finished each of the images and saved them with .psd and the suffix "fnl" added to the name, go to Bridge and open the folder you saved them to.

2. In Lightable mode, look for all the filenames that have "fnl" as a suffix. Temporarily place a label of a color you haven't used for anything else on those that belong in your target group.

3. From the Filtered/Unfiltered menu, choose the label color you just assigned to your group. Now there are no other files in the Lightbox, so press Cmd/Ctrl-A to select them all. Be sure to deselect any folders that happened to get selected.

4. Choose ToolsPhotoshopImage Processor. The Image Processor dialog will appear. Be sure to make all the settings as you see them in Figure 12-42.

   Figure 12-42. Image Processor dialog.