From RAW to JPEG to BIG PRINT
redsvt
Registered Users Posts: 11 Big grins
I am new to this digital world, and lovin it. Anyway what is your prefered workflow to create an image to smugmug and ultimately a large print. How do you process your raw images.
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couple things I do re workflow and I'm not the ipso facto guy to go to-
I shoot in raw (the files) and jpeg so I have jpeg immediately available-usually end up deleting the jpegs-
with my raw file, I adjust the white balance (good place to get the color balance right) and usually will tweak exposure, shadows, brightness, and contrast with the preview, shadows and highlights checked so more than anything I can try to keep from blowing highlights-
I then move to ps and usually work on crop, levels, curves and sharpen-
I will save the finished photo in tif and also keep the raw file--some suggest converting the raw to a dng-
if I move to sm I resize down (not much) and convert to jpeg-
I usually don't print or have a large print made-
of course, in that workflow you should have some kind of archival system developed (I'm backing up but I don't have a good system down yet)-
hope that helps and I trust you'll get some ideas from others-
best
george
I shoot only in Raw with my 20D.
I download all the pics to my harddrive and then open the folders up in bridge. From there I inspect all the images and give them a rating from 1 to 5 stars. I do that for all the folders that I just uploaded. Then I go back into each folder and filter it out for 5 star only images and start working on those, then 4 stars and above and work on those and so on. Most 3 stars don't see the light of day and most 2 star and below get deleted unless it's a technical issue and I really like the idea of the image and I may try it again or something.
Anywho...
The first thing I do is to set up ACR how I want it. Click on the "Show Workflow Options" at the bottom left corner of ACR. For Space I set ProPhoto RGB and for depth set 16 Bits/Channel. My 20D Raw images are automatically set to 240 pixels/inch. I don't even bother with this as it has no bearing on anything with regard to my workflow. Then I set the white balance to As Shot and I set the contrast to 0. I then go to the detail tab and set sharpness and luminance smoothing to 0 and set the color noise reduction to 100. Then I go to the curve tab and set the tone curve to linear. After all that is done I save that as the default ACR settings by clicking on the little sideways arrow just above and to the right of the tabs and selecting set new camera raw defaults.
I've also got bridge set up so that it doesn't open photoshop every time I go into ACR which is very handy. So I'll select all the 5 star images in a folder in bridge and right click them to open them in ACR. The very first thing I do is to straighten the images in ACR. The straightening tool in bridge is awesome. But you can use the lens correction tool in photoshop later if you prefer.
My thought about white balance is that unless I'm shooting under tungsten lighting, the 20D has outstanding auto white balance. So unless I did something wrong for most lighting situations, the white balance should be very nearly spot on so I don't adjust it much. I'll adjust the exposure slider just to the edge of pixels being clipped in the highlights. I'm usually comfortable with a small amount of clipping for certain things like very bright reflections and that sort of thing but large areas of pure white aren't good. Tip: hold the alt key while you're dragging your exposure slider to get an idea of what has clipped and what is nearly clipped.
Then I move on to the shadow slider. Hold the alt key to get the black clipping for this slider as well. My thoughts about clipping to black are the same as clipping to white. I'm comfortable with clipping a very small area in certain situations but large areas aren't good. So adjust the shadows slider accordingly.
Then I go to the brightness slider and adjust the midtones until they look good. Consider getting something to calibrate your monitor. I like the inexpensive Huey by Pantone. Some people think it's horrible and prefer more expensive options. Anyhow use the brightness slider to adjust your midtones but don't go crazy with it because you can cause clipping if you do.
Then I'll go into the lens tab. I've just recently been noticing how much CA my 17-85mm lens has. So I'll zoom way in to areas of high contrast (edges of leaves or bright lights whatever) and adjust the Chromatic Aberration sliders until I get to a point where the CA is visibly reduced. Then if I have any disturbing vignetting, I'll adjust those sliders until it's gone or reduced (I don't have any particular technique for that).
So I'll do all that for each of the images open in ACR. Then I highlight all of them and click open. I only do maybe 5 at a time by the way. This opens the images in photoshop. From there I'll do the Lab corrections that you can find discussed in the sticky in this room or in Dan Margulis' book. Once I've got that done I'll select the L channel and apply a bit of sharpening to it using smart sharpen. Then I edit the IPTC data with the title, description, and keywords. I have an action that converts the image to 8bit sRGB. Then I save the image as a jpg and upload it to Smugmug.
That's what I do.
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
As much as possible, do your levels and curves at the raw stage so that those edits can be saved with your raw file. If you have to convert the image again later for another purpose, you won't have to remember what you did in Photoshop. Applying Highlight, Brightness, and Shadow in Camera Raw is analogous to the three Levels sliders in Photoshop, and of course the Curves tab in Camera Raw is the same as the Curves in Photoshop.
Also try to do your cropping/straightening in Camera Raw so that will also be saved with the source file itself, so that you will never have to do it again if in the future you convert the file again. It is also possible to edit a crop in Camera Raw at any time because it's in metadata, not permanently cutting off the image. After using Camera Raw cropping, I really don't enjoy cropping in Photoshop any more.
By doing those things in Camera Raw, you can spend less time in Photoshop. But for a big print, some work in Photoshop will sometimes be needed.
one comment on mike's workflow, which is excellent and very comprehensive, is on the balance; I will click on auto on the dropdown to see if it makes any appreciable improvement, but, as Mike said, the 20d on awb does pretty good-
colourbox had great comments, especially about the crop-
I'm glad you posted this thread because I can see some things I need to incorporate in my workflow-
george