(got the) post-processing blues

sara505 · September 3, 2006

I used to be a good photographer. Then came digital, which I love--I have had my digital SLR for a couple of years, but have only spent the past six months rather diligantly trying to "master"--but wow, seems I am spending a ton of time post-processing, and I'm still confused about my results and about how much time I should actually be spending at my computer.

Basically, I shoot a job, say a family photo-shoot on the beach. Fine. But even when I have good light and good exposures, I still end up having to tweak the levels on almost every image, straighten a horizon or two, crop a few, and by then I have doubled the time I have spent on the job, or even tripled. And I'm not even talking about extraordinary measures, just run of the mill--make the pictures look pretty.

Then when I get the images looking good in Photoshop, in the case of today's effort, the Keough family, they look washed out in my Smug Mug Gallery. And I have simply moved the slider in Levels so it only approaches the mountain in the middle, trying not to over-do, staying well within the parameters I see before me--they even still look a little dark to my eye (all of my unedited images inititally look dark and lifeless), but the images look washed out in my gallery.

Please, could someone give me feed-back and tell me if this is the case?
Particularly as pertains to the gallery I posted today: the keough family (my Families galery at www.sarapiazza.com)(three wild little boys who never stopped moving for an hour and a half)

I am curious, how much time are people spending post-processing?

Am I over-editing? Trying too hard? My old photo lab, from my film days, told me, "don't touch the files, send them as is," and indeed, they do a nice job--seems their machines auto-correct. But I want the images to look good on-line, and I want to give my clients a CD with files that will look good on their computers as well as make a good print.

On another level, I love the control--I'm fascinated by the possibilities!--I loved the darkroom for this reason--but, wow--it is so much more time consuming than I had imagined.

Sorry to be so long. Tired and discouraged.

Isaac_Golding · September 3, 2006

sara505 wrote:

Please, could someone give me feed-back and tell me if this is the case?
Particularly as pertains to the gallery I posted today: the keough family (my Families galery at www.sarapiazza.com)(three wild little boys who never stopped moving for an hour and a half)

I am curious, how much time are people spending post-processing?

I think your shots look fine, however the link you posted directly to the images is broken and I was forced to dig down to find the pictures.

I spend an average of 5 min per image and I do the bulk of my work in Picasa. For shots that require the additional skills I back out of Picasa and load the shot up in PS2. (oops CS2) My gallery is now full of images that I edit purely by what I see and the majority of the work is direct from RAW files fed to Picasa.... http://www.isaacgolding.com/gallery/ (yes a shamless plug for my own gallery)

You might just be overworking your images or even worse, your brain. Break camp from what you know. Grab Picasa, or GIMP or some "other" photo editor and stop pushing the same old buttons. Edit the photo to what simply looks good and don't worry about matching your colors exactly & making sure that the blacks are really black and the whites are really white and that grey is really 128.

Remember this is supposed to be fun and if your getting burnt out processing every image you pull from the camera then you are doing something wrong. Go back to the basics, work the images from a fresh perspective, (program) and I bet things will work out for you.

sara505 · September 3, 2006

Isaac_Golding wrote:

I think your shots look fine, however the link you posted directly to the images is broken and I was forced to dig down to find the pictures.

I spend an average of 5 min per image and I do the bulk of my work in Picasa. For shots that require the additional skills I back out of Picasa and load the shot up in PS2. My gallery is now full of images that I edit purely by what I see and the majority of the work is direct from RAW files fed to Picasa.... http://www.isaacgolding.com/gallery/ (yes a shamless plug for my own gallery)

You might just be overworking your images or even worse, your brain. Break camp from what you know. Grab Picasa, or GIMP or some "other" photo editor and stop pushing the same old buttons. Edit the photo to what simply looks good and don't worry about matching your colors exactly & making sure that the blacks are really black and the whites are really white and that grey is really 128.

Remember this is supposed to be fun and if your getting burnt out processing every image you pull from the camera then you are doing something wrong. Go back to the basics, work the images from a fresh perspective, (program) and I bet things will work out for you.

Thank you Isaac. What does it mean, "the link was broken?" I am trying so hard to keep up with the technology--I am determined not to be left behind--but I am on the edge of my learning curve every minute. I am probably old enough to be your mother.

I like your attitude, will look into Picasa, and btw, what's PS2? I feel as though I am light years behind everyone else here.

mwgrice · September 3, 2006

sara505 wrote:

Thank you Isaac. What does it mean, "the link was broken?" I am trying so hard to keep up with the technology--I am determined not to be left behind--but I am on the edge of my learning curve every minute. I am probably old enough to be your mother.

I like your attitude, will look into Picasa, and btw, what's PS2? I feel as though I am light years behind everyone else here.

To me, it sounds like you just need to find a routine (or "workflow," as they call it) which you feel comfortable with and which accomplishs the things you want. If you don't have a specific idea of what you want to do with an image, I bet that's when you waste the most time on it. That's certainly what I usually do.

Specific goals for each image could be something like this:

1. Make it level (crop if needed).
2. Give it some "pop" to make it less dull (use levels or curves).
3. Sharpen the image a little (use unsharp mask).

Stick to that, and forget everything else. As you become more adept with Photoshop, you can do more with it--or not. For instance, other people on this forum may be able to make suggestions about doing things like sharpening to images in batches, which would probably save you a lot of time.

I think these two tutorials give a nice overview on how to use Photoshop to make your images less dull-seeming:

Making images pop, part 1

Making images pop, part 2

One thing you could do would be to pick an image you think is a little lifeless and let people here see what they can do with it.

Oh, and are you sure you want people to be able to download originals from your galleries?

sara505 · September 3, 2006

mwgrice wrote:

To me, it sounds like you just need to find a routine (or "workflow," as they call it) which you feel comfortable with and which accomplishs the things you want. If you don't have a specific idea of what you want to do with an image, I bet that's when you waste the most time on it. That's certainly what I usually do.

Specific goals for each image could be something like this:

1. Make it level (crop if needed).
2. Give it some "pop" to make it less dull (use levels or curves).
3. Sharpen the image a little (use unsharp mask).

Stick to that, and forget everything else. As you become more adept with Photoshop, you can do more with it--or not. For instance, other people on this forum may be able to make suggestions about doing things like sharpening to images in batches, which would probably save you a lot of time.

I think these two tutorials give a nice overview on how to use Photoshop to make your images less dull-seeming:

Making images pop, part 1

Making images pop, part 2

One thing you could do would be to pick an image you think is a little lifeless and let people here see what they can do with it.

Oh, and are you sure you want people to be able to download originals from your galleries?

I am closing on on my technique, with both the camera and photoshop. At some point I will become more adept, but the above-mentioned job took an hour and a half to shoot, and the 200 images--some of which I tossed because those boys were WILD--took at least a couple of hours to edit (I'd be embarrassed to tell you exactly). So how to compensate for the additional time digital photography eats up? At my going rate, the added time greatly diminishes my fee per hour. So, I need to get better at this, or charge more.

I will post an image, but currently I am unable to access my web page, or at least, the page with controls.

No, I'm not sure I want people to be able to download my originals--how do I stop this?
Thanks.

sara505 · September 3, 2006

Above is an unedited image.

Below is same image with levels slightly tweaked, a little USM, as I recall.

Nikolai · September 3, 2006

Sara,

sara505 wrote:

I am curious, how much time are people spending post-processing?

I can tell you only about myself.
It really depends on the image.
Quite often it just stays there, on the HDD and in my own little wet RAM (I mean my brain:-), so no time is pent except for a few secods during the culling and decing "nah, nothing special today"
If it's a batch, like a high school football game (non-pro, just for my kids), then it's all the RAWflow. Maybe a tweak or two in ACR (if needed). Less than 30 sec on average.
Finally, if it's something I really like - it can be anything from 15-30 minutes to hours...

HTH

bham · September 4, 2006

sara505 wrote:

No, I'm not sure I want people to be able to download my originals--how do I stop this?
Thanks.

First question is do you have a pro account? From what I see you don't. All galleries I viewed the original and download it and print prices are at cost.

I would go to a pro account and then you have so much control of your site and images. Can turn of galleries to the public, can password protect, can protect your images from download, can set print prices and make $ of every print sale, the list goes on.

Mongrel · September 4, 2006

Hi Sara,
...I feel your pain...

A few things...

I see nothing wrong in the presentation of you pics on my monitor. I'm not even using my good monitor at the moment, so I'm sure they are fine.

For some unknown reason, certain people seem to have it so together that they can punch out a thousand pics perfectly post processed in like twenty minutes (including the coffee). Others, like you and me apparently, really do struggle with this aspect of digital photography.

I am making major changes in my whole approach not only to post processing but my photography in general because of one simple four letter word-T-I-M-E. Don't get me wrong, I still *love* photography immensely. But the "hours at the computer" thing is just not working, or worse yet, not paying off (at least the way I thought it would).

I haven't done many family portraits like in your case (I've mainly focused on youth sports action), so maybe my advice really isn't applicable but-

I cannot afford to fully post process *every* pic that can technically be sold. Therefore, I *refuse* to do more than necessary to get them onto the web via my smugmug site. I've spent wayyyy too much time carefully preparing and fully post processing upward of 1000 pics from a two or three day tournament only to have them become someon's "FREE online photo gallery and digital picture frame. The solution is to put up a series of edited for web images and to kick in delayed printing. Put a watermark on them and limit the viewing to only 'med'. Now, what does this offer? It allows me to *only* spend time on the shots that have ALREADY SOLD! Instead of wasting time preparing shots that will NEVER SELL!

Secondly, I've been asking those deep questions like...

I am having fun?
Why do my kids say "your always in your office on the computer"?
How do I justify almost $10,000 in gear (maybe even more...)?
What the heck do I really *want* to shoot?
How do I pursue my photography without loosing contact with those I love the most?

Well...you get the idea....

So what answers did I come up with?

1. No, what I've been doing, or more importantly the *way* I've been doing it sucks frankly. I've just grown very tired of being the "free" team photog guy, especially when the time involved *after* the shoot is two to three times the time it took to shoot the original event.

2. Because I am...

3. I can't at this point. Either the gear helps me sell my shots OR I sell the gear (stay tuned...)

4. What I really enjoy shooting probably falls into the so-called 'fine art' type photography more than anything else. Definately not "sports" photography (at least the way I've been doing it). Sports photography seems to be a very good business for some. But I can't produce what they produce in a timely fashion without pursuing it much harder than I have time for. For me, it's much easier to think about spending 8hours wandering around the city shooting than sitting on a field for two hours and then spending 6hours post-processing everything. No, give me one hundred shots, and I'll pick the best and post process them *on my time*.

5. Lastly, for me, I'm looking for ways to include my family in my shooting as much as possible from "day trips" with cameras to putting a tv in my office for them to watch while I take care of business-lol.

Well, I may have strayed off of your original topic a bit, but hopefully not too much!

Problem is right now it's 3:30am and I'm just about falling asleep at the keyboard ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

good night moon........................

sara505 · September 4, 2006

bham wrote:

First question is do you have a pro account? From what I see you don't. All galleries I viewed the original and download it and print prices are at cost.

I would go to a pro account and then you have so much control of your site and images. Can turn of galleries to the public, can password protect, can protect your images from download, can set print prices and make $ of every print sale, the list goes on.

I do have a pro account. Will check into protecting images from download.
Thanks.

mrcoons · September 4, 2006

sara505 wrote:

I do have a pro account. Will check into protecting images from download.
Thanks.

Try http://www.smugmug.com/help/image-protection this.

Isaac_Golding · September 4, 2006

sara505 wrote:

Thank you Isaac. What does it mean, "the link was broken?" I am trying so hard to keep up with the technology--I am determined not to be left behind--but I am on the edge of my learning curve every minute. I am probably old enough to be your mother.

I like your attitude, will look into Picasa, and btw, what's PS2? I feel as though I am light years behind everyone else here.

Ref your broken link:
When you typed www.sarapiazza.com you didn't put a space after it and the (three was snagged into the automatic link that the forum makes for you. And I was a bit confused as to where the pictures were that you wanted us to look at. A suggestion would be that you go to the exact page you want us to look at next time and copy that address from yuor browser and paste here. Make sure there is a space after it and then we will know exactly what you wanted us to see.

REF PS2 is short for Adobe Photo Shop I just typoed and said PS2 instead of CS2 my mistake.... :-)

Isaac_Golding · September 4, 2006

mwgrice wrote:

To me, it sounds like you just need to find a routine (or "workflow," as they call it) which you feel comfortable with and which accomplishs the things you want. If you don't have a specific idea of what you want to do with an image, I bet that's when you waste the most time on it. That's certainly what I usually do.

Specific goals for each image could be something like this:

1. Make it level (crop if needed).
2. Give it some "pop" to make it less dull (use levels or curves).
3. Sharpen the image a little (use unsharp mask).

Stick to that, and forget everything else. As you become more adept with Photoshop, you can do more with it--or not. For instance, other people on this forum may be able to make suggestions about doing things like sharpening to images in batches, which would probably save you a lot of time.

I think these two tutorials give a nice overview on how to use Photoshop to make your images less dull-seeming:

Making images pop, part 1

Making images pop, part 2

One thing you could do would be to pick an image you think is a little lifeless and let people here see what they can do with it.

Oh, and are you sure you want people to be able to download originals from your galleries?

I'm going to echo mwgrice here. I do exactly what is mentioned above.
I trim the images if needed (rarely) I bump up my saturation and sharpen. Which is why I like picasa so much for those quick images that were good to begin with. I LOVE Photoshop for all of its power however it presents me with too many options at a time. You can quickly get sucked into the delimma of too many variations of one image... which is what I suspect your getting into. There are hundreds of variations of that one image that you can produce and they all look good so you spend 20, 30, 40, 50 min trying to find "the best one".

And at this point is where it stops being fun..... I know I'm right on the money here because I've done it too. Stop doing it.

Go back to the basic stuff and do just the basics. Crop if needed, make the image "pop", and sharpen as desired. That should cover 90% of what you do. And if Photoshop is still sucking you in and you feel you still can do more....break camp for a few days and try Picasa. It's definitly different and you really need to sit down for a bit and just use it. It has seriously changed my workflow habits and I'm better off for it.

digismile · September 4, 2006

Sara,

You mentioned that you thought some of your photos looked "flat" on your website. What colorspace do you have your 10D set for? I appologize if I missed it, but are you using a version of photoshop? What colorspace are you using in the photo editor? Among all the things that can contribute to flat images, using AdobeRGB(1998) instead of sRGB for your uploaded jpegs can also add to the flatness. You can certainly work in AdobeRGB but you need to convert the photos to sRGB. I believe that Smugmug recently reported that they can convert AdobeRGB photos to sRGB on upload, but I've never tried it.

I used to process everything in AdobeRGB but converted to just sRGB and I've been a lot happier.

As well, are you shooting RAW or jpg? I will talk a bit about RAW in a second, but if you are using jpg, check your setup menu on your camera and see what "Parameters" you are using (Set 1, Set2, etc.) I no longer recall which is which, but I believe Parameter 1 will boost saturation and contrast a bit, Parameter is more "natural" or flat, etc.

I only mention these points if you find yourself post processing most or all of your photos for web viewing. This would suggest to me that something in the basic setup could be off. Assuming good lighting, good exposure, etc. you should be able to produce a more than acceptable jpg with little or no post processing. Making a picture "pop" is something I leave for a select number of photos that I want to really stand out. No different that a photographer that decides he wants to take extra time in the darkroom for a certain photo. As was said, we don't have time to do the maximum effort on every photo.

I must reiterate that "workflow" is the key to your
dilemma on spending too much time, ie. you must have the right tools, otherwise you can find all the work cumbersome after a while.

I won't go into great detail, but will describe a fairly simple workflow that saves me a lot of time:

1. Copy all RAW files from my flashcard to a specific folder on my hard drive (this is my "in" basket. If I have files in this directory, I still haven't done anything with them yet).

2. Open Adobe Bridge and run "Import from Camera" script (free script from the Adobe website).
With this script, I rename all my files to my preferred naming convention, move them to the place on the hard drive where I want my files to reside, build the folder cache for fast viewing in Adobe Bridge, and add some basic copyright info.

3. Upon completion, I now either just use the standard viewing in Bridge or possibly the Slideshow mode to go through the photos once to weed out any files for deletion. At this point, I am only doing this with "tags", I'm not actually deleting them. I am also rating the photos as I go. This is done with simple single keystrokes as the slideshow progresses.

4. I now "filter" to see only those images with a certain rating and above. At this point, I can now do a lot of very quick adjustments in camera RAW. The RAW editor allows you to open a series of photos (e.g. a group that has very similar lighting) and you can make the same adjustments to the group. I like the RAW editor because I can fix crooked horizons, crop the image, adjust contrast/saturation, etc. WITHOUT harming the original. You can open the RAW file at any time and change the crop (or any other settings. I also may do a small amount of sharpening on initial conversion.

I also add keywords at this point, but many people do not. I can go through steps 3 & 4 very quickly, allowing me to produce a very good set of initial photographs in a very short period of time.

5. I now use "Image Processor" in Adobe Bridge to convert this entire set to jpg. I can resize them to a common size if I want, as well as run any number of actions (e.g. add some sharpening for output).

I can then upload the entire batch to my smugmug account.

At this point, I often see pictures that I'd like to do further editing. I think you need to distinguish between photos that would have looked just as bad on film as digital (but can be post processed), and those that have been correctly exposed. It's very easy to spend all your time in Photoshop post processing simply because you can. I fix only those things that I absolutely think should be fixed/want to fix. It's hard to argue that you can't do SOME kind of improvement of every photo in Photoshop! But do you want to?

Before Adobe Bridge (and using RAW format), I probably opened almost every file for basic tweaking. Now I can do a lot of batch processing and only go back and work on a smaller subset.

I can't speak for the other programs mentioned, but they certainly have been discussed in the many threads on workflow. Find something that gives you the ability to do some form of batch processing and you will find that your time spent will decrease.

Regards,

meewolfie · September 4, 2006

Sara - This photo is lovely!

I noticed that you have 5 or 6 gallery pages for this photoshoot. Did you process every photo? Is the client going to buy a copy of every photo?

There have been lots of good suggestions already on determining your colorspace and improving workflow. I have one more suggestion - limit the number of photos that you spend more than a minute or two processing. Let the client pick the images that they want to buy, then invest your time post-processing those (the assumption being that your print prices take into consideration post-processing time).

For example, there are six versions of certain images in this family's gallery with only minor differences in the kid's expressions, etc. I would guess that the parents will only pick one of those for purchase. Time spent editing the other versions of the image is time you're not getting paid for!

If you are shooting in RAW, you should be able to do a quick edit (tweaking the RAW settings) on one instance of a particular composition, then you can simply copy and paste your RAW settings to the other similar photos from the shoot. This is a quick and easy way to prepare images that are going to be used as more of a contact sheet preview instead of a finished piece.

I like Brad's steps listed above - and now I'm going to go use some of his suggestions for my own workflow! (Thanks, Brad!)

John Houghton , nov 19, 2005; 04:48 p.m.
You need to use Adobe Bridge in <snip> . Select and open a RAW image in Bridge, and make whatever adjustments you like. Then click on Done. If desired, you can now use right click and select Copy Camera RAW Settings. Highlight any number of other image thumbnails and right click to paste those settings into the selected images. Otherwise, you can make separate adjustments to other images. <snip> Just one point: take care with the automatic settings. If you want all the images to match (for panorama stitching purposes, for example), then uncheck auto adjustments, since individual images will end up with a different colour balance, being individually auto adjusted.
John

(I found this info in this thread.)

Mary

claudermilk · September 4, 2006

A lot of really good advice here. I'll cover my own experiences.

I was in the same quagmire you now find yourself in about a year ago when I really got serious about my photogtaphy. I spent way too much time in front of the PC incessantly tweaking each image & not really knowing where I was going. I first got a couple of books (Real World Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop for Photographers) and skimmed through them to pick up the aspects that caused me the tmost trouble.

I then spent about 6 months really examining each step of my workflow--and figuring out what that workflow is. I now have a carefully-chosen set of tools with a purpose for each. All of them have some sort of batching/automation capability. So now I don't have to mess with much of the grunt work (renaming, sorting into directories, etc). I start with culling through the images & rating them and typically end up with 10-20% of the shoot that I even spend any more time on. I found in Bibble I was applying the same curve to nearly all the images--made that a preset so now they all automatically get it. I also take full advantage of the fact that in a single shoot, many of the same tweaks apply to all images, so making basic lighting/WB adjustments on one image instantly translates to potentially hundreds.

Once you have a comfortable, workable workflow 95% of the time is spent on the 5% of the images that really deserve/need it, while the rest are just fine with batch-applied adjustments. I really spend most of my time on about 1% of the images, while the rest are completely ignored or are perfectly acceptable with the general-to-the-shoot adjustments applied inthe first five minutes of PP. So I guess what I'm getting to in a roundabout manner is most of the images don't need all that attention--they're just burning you out.

The shots on your site look great. If you take a look at my site, the majority of those were batch-processed & each likely only has a few minutes--if that--of personal attention (the B&W conversions are obvious exceptions--those are part of the 1%).

Rene` · September 4, 2006

Perfection
Sara,

I think your pictures look fine. Sometimes in this new digital world we strive too hard for perfection.

Rene`

sara505 wrote:

I used to be a good photographer. Then came digital, which I love--I have had my digital SLR for a couple of years, but have only spent the past six months rather diligantly trying to "master"--but wow, seems I am spending a ton of time post-processing, and I'm still confused about my results and about how much time I should actually be spending at my computer.

Basically, I shoot a job, say a family photo-shoot on the beach. Fine. But even when I have good light and good exposures, I still end up having to tweak the levels on almost every image, straighten a horizon or two, crop a few, and by then I have doubled the time I have spent on the job, or even tripled. And I'm not even talking about extraordinary measures, just run of the mill--make the pictures look pretty.

Then when I get the images looking good in Photoshop, in the case of today's effort, the Keough family, they look washed out in my Smug Mug Gallery. And I have simply moved the slider in Levels so it only approaches the mountain in the middle, trying not to over-do, staying well within the parameters I see before me--they even still look a little dark to my eye (all of my unedited images inititally look dark and lifeless), but the images look washed out in my gallery.

Please, could someone give me feed-back and tell me if this is the case?
Particularly as pertains to the gallery I posted today: the keough family (my Families galery at www.sarapiazza.com)(three wild little boys who never stopped moving for an hour and a half)

I am curious, how much time are people spending post-processing?

Am I over-editing? Trying too hard? My old photo lab, from my film days, told me, "don't touch the files, send them as is," and indeed, they do a nice job--seems their machines auto-correct. But I want the images to look good on-line, and I want to give my clients a CD with files that will look good on their computers as well as make a good print.

On another level, I love the control--I'm fascinated by the possibilities!--I loved the darkroom for this reason--but, wow--it is so much more time consuming than I had imagined.

Sorry to be so long. Tired and discouraged.

sara505 · September 8, 2006

mrcoons wrote:

Try http://www.smugmug.com/help/image-protection this.

Thanks, have now protected my images.
I have been slowly finding my way in this world, hearing what other folks are doing helps so much. I think I am gaining ground!

sara505 · September 8, 2006

digismile wrote:

Sara,

You mentioned that you thought some of your photos looked "flat" on your website. What colorspace do you have your 10D set for? I appologize if I missed it, but are you using a version of photoshop? What colorspace are you using in the photo editor? Among all the things that can contribute to flat images, using AdobeRGB(1998) instead of sRGB for your uploaded jpegs can also add to the flatness. You can certainly work in AdobeRGB but you need to convert the photos to sRGB. I believe that Smugmug recently reported that they can convert AdobeRGB photos to sRGB on upload, but I've never tried it.

How do I find out what color space I am using. It's an old version of PS-I am too poor to upgrade right now, will soon though, as soon as I stop shelling out dough for cameras (just bought my second dslr, realizing I can't do weddings without back-up). I am staying with my familiar version while I crack the thing.
So, how do I find out which color space I am using? I will meantime poke around.

I used to process everything in AdobeRGB but converted to just sRGB and I've been a lot happier.

As well, are you shooting RAW or jpg? I will talk a bit about RAW in a second, but if you are using jpg, check your setup menu on your camera and see what "Parameters" you are using (Set 1, Set2, etc.) I no longer recall which is which, but I believe Parameter 1 will boost saturation and contrast a bit, Parameter is more "natural" or flat, etc.

I am shooting in jpg, have not had the courage to try RAW, though I understand one has more control. But what about those large files, and how many 1g memory cards would I need for shooting 500 images at a wedding?

I only mention these points if you find yourself post processing most or all of your photos for web viewing. This would suggest to me that something in the basic setup could be off.
Assuming good lighting, good exposure, etc. you should be able to produce a more than acceptable jpg with little or no post processing. Making a picture "pop" is something I leave for a select number of photos that I want to really stand out. No different that a photographer that decides he wants to take extra time in the darkroom for a certain photo. As was said, we don't have time to do the maximum effort on every photo.

Thanks for all of this great info!
Sara (who can't believe she stuck that little obscene licking smiley in her message again!)

I must reiterate that "workflow" is the key to your
dilemma on spending too much time, ie. you must have the right tools, otherwise you can find all the work cumbersome after a while.

I won't go into great detail, but will describe a fairly simple workflow that saves me a lot of time:

1. Copy all RAW files from my flashcard to a specific folder on my hard drive (this is my "in" basket. If I have files in this directory, I still haven't done anything with them yet).

2. Open Adobe Bridge and run "Import from Camera" script (free script from the Adobe website).
With this script, I rename all my files to my preferred naming convention, move them to the place on the hard drive where I want my files to reside, build the folder cache for fast viewing in Adobe Bridge, and add some basic copyright info.

3. Upon completion, I now either just use the standard viewing in Bridge or possibly the Slideshow mode to go through the photos once to weed out any files for deletion. At this point, I am only doing this with "tags", I'm not actually deleting them. I am also rating the photos as I go. This is done with simple single keystrokes as the slideshow progresses.

4. I now "filter" to see only those images with a certain rating and above. At this point, I can now do a lot of very quick adjustments in camera RAW. The RAW editor allows you to open a series of photos (e.g. a group that has very similar lighting) and you can make the same adjustments to the group. I like the RAW editor because I can fix crooked horizons, crop the image, adjust contrast/saturation, etc. WITHOUT harming the original. You can open the RAW file at any time and change the crop (or any other settings. I also may do a small amount of sharpening on initial conversion.

I also add keywords at this point, but many people do not. I can go through steps 3 & 4 very quickly, allowing me to produce a very good set of initial photographs in a very short period of time.

5. I now use "Image Processor" in Adobe Bridge to convert this entire set to jpg. I can resize them to a common size if I want, as well as run any number of actions (e.g. add some sharpening for output).

I can then upload the entire batch to my smugmug account.

At this point, I often see pictures that I'd like to do further editing. I think you need to distinguish between photos that would have looked just as bad on film as digital (but can be post processed), and those that have been correctly exposed. It's very easy to spend all your time in Photoshop post processing simply because you can. I fix only those things that I absolutely think should be fixed/want to fix. It's hard to argue that you can't do SOME kind of improvement of every photo in Photoshop! But do you want to?

Before Adobe Bridge (and using RAW format), I probably opened almost every file for basic tweaking. Now I can do a lot of batch processing and only go back and work on a smaller subset.

I can't speak for the other programs mentioned, but they certainly have been discussed in the many threads on workflow. Find something that gives you the ability to do some form of batch processing and you will find that your time spent will decrease.

Regards,[/quote]

sara505 · September 8, 2006

meewolfie wrote:

Sara - This photo is lovely!

Thank you!

I noticed that you have 5 or 6 gallery pages for this photoshoot. Did you process every photo? Is the client going to buy a copy of every photo?

Yes, I did--and then some. I process all but the truly bad images, put them all on a CD, post the besst of the batch, the fee I am paid for the shoot gives them the CD. I think I need to change my ways. Are people using the web as the sole platform for prints? IOW, should I eliminate the CD, just use the web for sales?

There have been lots of good suggestions already on determining your colorspace and improving workflow. I have one more suggestion - limit the number of photos that you spend more than a minute or two processing. Let the client pick the images that they want to buy, then invest your time post-processing those (the assumption being that your print prices take into consideration post-processing time).

For example, there are six versions of certain images in this family's gallery with only minor differences in the kid's expressions, etc. I would guess that the parents will only pick one of those for purchase. Time spent editing the other versions of the image is time you're not getting paid for!

These kids were really really hard to shoot--very wild, with the mother yelling (the lowest point was when she told the kids "That's it, Santa isn't coming this year.")
So I wanted to show the subtleties.

If you are shooting in RAW, you should be able to do a quick edit (tweaking the RAW settings) on one instance of a particular composition, then you can simply copy and paste your RAW settings to the other similar photos from the shoot. This is a quick and easy way to prepare images that are going to be used as more of a contact sheet preview instead of a finished piece.

I'm not quite up to that speed yet.
Thanks, Mary:):

I like Brad's steps listed above - and now I'm going to go use some of his suggestions for my own workflow! (Thanks, Brad!)

Mary[/quote]

sara505 · September 8, 2006

A lot of really good advice here. I'll cover my own experiences.

I was in the same quagmire you now find yourself in about a year ago when I really got serious about my photogtaphy. I spent way too much time in front of the PC incessantly tweaking each image & not really knowing where I was going. I first got a couple of books (Real World Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop for Photographers) and skimmed through them to pick up the aspects that caused me the tmost trouble.

I then spent about 6 months really examining each step of my workflow--and figuring out what that workflow is. I now have a carefully-chosen set of tools with a purpose for each. All of them have some sort of batching/automation capability. So now I don't have to mess with much of the grunt work (renaming, sorting into directories, etc). I start with culling through the images & rating them and typically end up with 10-20% of the shoot that I even spend any more time on. I found in Bibble I was applying the same curve to nearly all the images--made that a preset so now they all automatically get it. I also take full advantage of the fact that in a single shoot, many of the same tweaks apply to all images, so making basic lighting/WB adjustments on one image instantly translates to potentially hundreds.

claudermilk wrote:

Once you have a comfortable, workable workflow 95% of the time is spent on the 5% of the images that really deserve/need it, while the rest are just fine with batch-applied adjustments. I really spend most of my time on about 1% of the images, while the rest are completely ignored or are perfectly acceptable with the general-to-the-shoot adjustments applied inthe first five minutes of PP. So I guess what I'm getting to in a roundabout manner is most of the images don't need all that attention--they're just burning you out.

The shots on your site look great. If you take a look at my site, the majority of those were batch-processed & each likely only has a few minutes--if that--of personal attention (the B&W conversions are obvious exceptions--those are part of the 1%).

Thanks, I still have so much to learn. I have books that I pour through, I have been helped here, and I just keep working at it. I don't even know how to batch process yet. I'm going to check my PS settings, for starters.

sara505 · September 8, 2006

Rene` wrote:

Sara,

I think your pictures look fine. Sometimes in this new digital world we strive too hard for perfection.

Rene`

There's a lot of truth to this, methinks.
Thanks

Steve Cavigliano · September 8, 2006

Sara,
I think you are being too hard on yourself. Post processing is akin to cooking. You can use many different methods to arrive at similar results. You can over-analyze what needs to be done very easily. It's a rathole many of us has been down before

When I first started post processing, I was pretty heavy-handed and really had no clue about what I wanted my finished product to look like

What has helped me is having an idea of where I want a particular image to go. IOW, correcting tilted horizons would be something you'd want to do for almost any shot. But, other adjustments may not be so obvious. Yes, looking at the histogram can help guide you. But in many cases, there is no RIGHT or WRONG decisions. Most are personal decisions, again based on where the processor wants to take the final image.

I liked your image of the boy. I saw it as a pic taken as a early morning/early evening shot with sweet light coming from the right. If you look at the original histo, most of your data is in the middle. Pics like this often have that gray hazy look to them. Since most of the data is in the neutral area of the histo, this makes sense. You did well to stretch your histogram using levels (I usually use a curves layer so I can tweak levels, contrast and color with one adjustment tool).

Now that you have a less neutral or flat image, you need to figure out if this is the end of post. Or, just step 1. It all depends on what I mentioned earlier. What did you want this image to look like when you first started post processing? Did you want to show a sweet light golden glow? Did you want to saturate colors more? Do you need/want to selectively sharpen or blur areas within the frame? You can go on and on with this. I think you can understand how crazy you can drive yourself if you don't have a plan heading into post processing

At the end of the day, if the technical elements are close to correct (good exposure and focus) the rest of the job becomes more like art and is based mainly on the shooter's/processor's vision/interpretation of how it should look.

Your initial edit of the shot looks nice

Definitely a big improvement over the original. If you are happy with the results, fine. You now have a workflow to use in the future for this type of shot

Others may like the image a little less yellow. Or maybe with more contrast or "pop". Coming from Sony prosumers, with their vivid color and high levels of contrast, I tend to edit my shots for the above

Both versions work and only you (or the child's Mom or Dad) can tell us which one is the closest to reality.

As others have mentioned, once you do enough post work, you will develop workflows for certain type images. These workflows can be used to batch process similar type shots. I have different workflows for my family or people shots, my bird shots and sports shots. They all have differences I feel I need to address during post.

I hope this info makes sense and helps some. Bottomline is, don't drive yourself nutz over-analyzing what needs to be done. Like most other things. To get to 90% is easy. Getting that last 10%, may take weeks more....lol

Steve

sara505 · September 8, 2006

Lots of good points, Steve. Thanks.
I like your first offering, and speaking of "pop," which I basically know how to do, having learned from the tutorials in these pages--what if there's no real black in the image from which to derive the new black point?
If there's a nice dark shadow I can re-set the black point and get a much nicer image with added contrast, similar to your offering. But if I can't find a good black, the colors of the image go kerflooey.
For example, I don't see a real black anywhere in the image of the little boy--maybe a little in the shadow of his collar or under his arm--or are you simply using the darkest value, not necessarily black?

digismile · September 8, 2006

Sara,

I can't say for sure which menu you need to check in your version of PS, but look to see if you have something called color settings under one of your menus. In CS2, it's Edit->Color Settings. If you do find this, check and see what you have the RGB working space set to. This is where you would expect to see sRGB.

I think you also have the ability to set the colorspace for your Canon 10D. You should be able to find it your camera manual ffairly quickly. There's a pretty good chance you are in sRGB, but it's worth the check. The concept of colorspace gets a bit complicated for most, so if you find it great.

As far as the question as to the number of photos you get on a one Gb CF Card in RAW, I get about 100 or so on a 20D. I would guess that you should get about 133 on your 10D. The easiest way to tell is put in a blank card and set the file type to RAW and see how many photos it says you have left on your display! So this means you would need 4-5 cards to shoot 500 photos.

But before you even think about commiting to RAW for your wedding, I would try processing a few RAW photos first. It is likely that your version of PS may not support your current version of Canon Camera RAW. You will likely need another piece of software. Fortunately, there is a great piece of free software out there called RawShooter Esentials from www.pixmantec.com They have a premium version but their 2005 version is free and does a great job. There are many here that use RSE in their workflow.

I can't tell you how much I like RAW, but it's something that needs to work for you. It adds at least one step in your workflow, but for me, the benefits far outweigh the extra time involved. It is like everything else in digital photography, it takes a bit of practice to get the most out of it, so, if your thinking about it, give it a try before you shoot a critical event.

I think Steve gave some of the best advice. Don't over analyze things or be so hard on yourself. Many of your shots may already be 90% of what you want them to be. As mentioned, it's really easy to process the crap of every photo, whether they needed it or not.

Keep it simple and keep it in your current comfort zone and skill set. The last 10% processing you will be spending the rest of your life perfecting! (in other words, we are always improving, always learning).

sara505 · September 9, 2006

Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate the time people have taken to answer my questions. Lots of good stuff here. Thank you so much!:):

Steve Cavigliano · September 9, 2006

sara505 wrote:

Lots of good points, Steve. Thanks.
I like your first offering, and speaking of "pop," which I basically know how to do, having learned from the tutorials in these pages--what if there's no real black in the image from which to derive the new black point?
If there's a nice dark shadow I can re-set the black point and get a much nicer image with added contrast, similar to your offering. But if I can't find a good black, the colors of the image go kerflooey.
For example, I don't see a real black anywhere in the image of the little boy--maybe a little in the shadow of his collar or under his arm--or are you simply using the darkest value, not necessarily black?

Sara,
By moving the left most slider when using Levels, or by moving the 0 point when using Curves, you are essentially changing your black point. So when you move the left slider (Levels) under the hump's tail on your histogram. You are actually changing the black point. So you don't really need a black object in the pic to "set" the black point. You can make your own. Sure using the white and black point droppers make things easier and take some of the guesswork out of the equation, but it really isn't necessary, or mandatory, to use droppers to get good contrast/color from an image.

I see where you will be getting into shooting RAW. I'd say go for it

If you are apprehensive, shoot RAW+L JPG. That way you will always have a more familiar jpg version available to process and/or print. Do not be afraid to use RAW. As mentioned, with any of the good converters out there, you will add a new dimension to your post processing work. You can do things with a RAW image you cannot do with a jpg image. It is so much easier to tweak white balance, or fix CA, or bring out shadow and highlight detail when using a RAW converter.

I cannot recommend Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers highly enough. Lots of tips, tricks and short-cuts. Plus enough information to make one understand the WHY behind the use of most adjustments.

Good luck and as when taking pictures, try to have fun while doing your post processing.

If you're anything like most of the rest of us, you may find that it's easier than it looks to be, and it really can be as enjoyable as taking the shot

Steve

sara505 · September 9, 2006

Thanks, STeve. Yeah, I guess I'm headed in that direction--RAW--but I won't be trying it out on the wedding I'm shooting next weekend, believe me.

Thanks for the 'splanation on the black point.

Speaking of curves, sure feels like I'm on the edge of my learning curve every day.

The main thing I've gotten from this dialogue is, I am not the only one to ever have struggled through this "quagmire," and it's nice to see some folks have actually made it out alive, and are still smiling. I'll get there too!

Working diligently at closing the gap between my (hard-earned) photography skills and the technology.
Stay tuned!:):

sara505 · September 9, 2006

Steve Cavagliano wrote:

I cannot recommend Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers highly enough. Lots of tips, tricks and short-cuts. Plus enough information to make one understand the WHY behind the use of most adjustments.

I have one of his books, can't remember which. Good stuff. Next I will be upgrading to CS2--I'm trying to hold on to at least one familiar thing--my antiquated version of PS, which I'm just getting around to really learning. Soon.

(got the) post-processing blues

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