photomechanic, photoshop, photoshelter basics question

[otto37]

Hello, total photography beginner here. New camera, software, photo website; information overload.

What I want to do properly, and this may just be a simple photoshop question, or maybe someone can advise if I should be doing this a different way.  Sport photography, shooting in jpeg format, uploaded to Photoshelter for sale by digital download or print.

1. shoot photo, camera set to take JPEG.
2. download cards to my pc laptop, Vista operating system.
3. look at photos and add information to the pictures I want to keep, in photo mechanic.
4. in photo mechanic, select photo, and select edit, opening photo in photoshop cs3.
5. edit, mainly cropping, and basic color adjustment, such as using the Image, Adjustments, Auto Levels.
Then(question?):
6. save photo in photoshop properly, for use on photoshelter?
7. upload to photoshelter.

Saving: In photoshop, after cropping and auto level adjustment, I have selected; File, Save As, Save as Copy, Format, ?
What format should I save to?

I have been told by one person to save as Tiff, another PSD, still another JPEG. (once this is decided,then.....)

Then I want to upload the file to Photoshelter.

Photoshelter will recieve many different files, all mentioned.  However, when someone buys a photo by digital downlaod, it is sent to them in a high resolution JPEG.

So the next question is, why would I want to save the file in a Tiff or PSD, that will be uploaded to Photoshelter, only to be made into a JPEG again, when someone buys it?

Are the basic steps I have outlined with regard to using Photomechanic correct?

Should I be doing this a different way?

I'm hoping someone is using Photomechanic, Photoshop, and Photoshelter, and will understand my questions. Thank you in advance.  Mike

[professor pledger]

i use canon digital photo professional to view and batch files with...i really only use it when i have shot in raw format as photoshop will not open raw files, but dpp makes transferring them easy, only problem is they open as tif's, so maybe photo mechanic is best for this step...once in photoshop i always resize my photos to 300 dpi and A4 size as a standard to work with...all of this may or may not be relevant, but what is is i think you have a valid point about saving as jpg...most sites that sell photos will send in jpg and if the photo is 300 dpi it will print beautifully...a tip for working in photoshop that will give you a good 'true colour' photo is to change from rgb to lab mode, then adjust the a and b levels to these settings; 60,1.00,200...if you find your photo is a bit to dark then you can adjust the lightness from lab mode as well but be carefull...then change back to rgb..you might find that you want to make minor adjustments, that would be up to your calibration...i also use auto contrast and unsharpe mask before i change to lab mode...i have printed A4 and A3 size prints only changing the file format from psd, tif, jpg and png using canon premium paper and the pixma ix5000 printer and can see no difference in quality other than some take so long to print you can run a bath and have dinner whilst you wait...hope some of this helps...

[vAfotoriporter]

i really only use it when i have shot in raw format as photoshop will not open raw files

Well actually both PhotoShop CS3 and as I know CS4 does open RAW files of almost any cameras (this may depend on camera model and computer operating system used).