A RAW & LAB workflows

asamuel

Using CS2 and assuming i've used AWB: What exactly do I benefit from doing in RAW that I can't do in LAB? or more exactly which things do people recommend fiddling with in RAW and which things to leave for LAB.

My problem arises in that I have begun to feel comfortable using the Mr. Margulis workflow. I use curves and colour adjustment. BUT everybody raves also about RAW and many adjustments seem to overlap.

Exposure, setting b & W points, curves, sharpening?

What to use and what not to use in RAW???

If there is already an existing thread, sorry, just cannie see it.

Mike Lane

By manipulating in raw you lose less data than you would by manipulating an image in photoshop. Moral of the story is that you should start your photoshop process with the best image available.

And AWB doesn't always work...

Richard

asamuel wrote:

What to use and what not to use in RAW???

If there is already an existing thread, sorry, just cannie see it.

I'm not sure that there's a "correct" answer to your question. FWIW, I use RSE for RAW conversion and while it offers quite a few knobs to twist the only one I use all the time is exposure adjustment. I do mostly outdoors, daytime shots and AWB works fine in general. When I shoot indoors or at night, I generally do white balance adjustment in RSE because it is easier there than in CS2, but do all my other color adjustments in CS2. Once in a while, I will do noise reduction in RSE.

I think how you do it depends a lot on what you are dealing with. I never do batch conversions because all my shots are different, but many event photographers with tight deadlines and massive numbers of pics to process could not live without them. Probably the best advice is to experiment until you find the combination that balances quality and convenience best for you.

Regards,