How RAW can you go???

photocat

Hi guys and girls, I have mentioned that I am working on a book (first time to be published ever! This is big for me).
For that reason hubby got me a 2 GB flash card so that I can finally shoot raw and still have enough pics to take. I am a bulk shooter, so I need lots of room. Here is the question.
I downloaded the plugin so I can read the NEF in photoshop.Apart from the obvious entrance window that tweeks exposure and white balance, there must be so much more that I can do now.
Where do I start? Suggestions welcome...
O, I am photographer for the book and layouter, I worked for the biggest Belgian Newspaper back then, so layouting sits in my blood.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Catherine

gus

Sorry PC but when things start looking this deep to me...i run away & start taking photos of the cat.

gubbs

photocat wrote:

Hi guys and girls, I have mentioned that I am working on a book (first time to be published ever! This is big for me).
For that reason hubby got me a 2 GB flash card so that I can finally shoot raw and still have enough pics to take. I am a bulk shooter, so I need lots of room. Here is the question.
I downloaded the plugin so I can read the NEF in photoshop.Apart from the obvious entrance window that tweeks exposure and white balance, there must be so much more that I can do now.
Where do I start? Suggestions welcome...
O, I am photographer for the book and layouter, I worked for the biggest Belgian Newspaper back then, so layouting sits in my blood.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Catherine

Cat,
exposure, wb, and tint are the main features I use, I do all the other adjustments in PS.
In difficult situations where the dynamic range is too wide, I'll take a couple of different exposures off the same raw file and blend them together (there are a couple of threads running about this already). Look here for some instructions for a couple of different methods

photocat

Humungus wrote:

Sorry PC but when things start looking this deep to me...i run away & start taking photos of the cat.

hmmm, I think I should follow your example...

photocat

how raw can you go?
Thanks Gub, will check it out.

Shay Stephens

photocat wrote:

Hi guys and girls, I have mentioned that I am working on a book (first time to be published ever! This is big for me).
For that reason hubby got me a 2 GB flash card so that I can finally shoot raw and still have enough pics to take. I am a bulk shooter, so I need lots of room. Here is the question.
I downloaded the plugin so I can read the NEF in photoshop.Apart from the obvious entrance window that tweeks exposure and white balance, there must be so much more that I can do now.
Where do I start? Suggestions welcome...
O, I am photographer for the book and layouter, I worked for the biggest Belgian Newspaper back then, so layouting sits in my blood.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Catherine

My most common RAW processing includes of course exposure and white balance, but I also regularly change the brightness and shadow sliders as well as the noise suppresion and the vignette control. The brightness and shadow control let me control the gamma and contrast of the shot. Once I have that image, not much else get's changed in PS except if cloning is needed or a blended exposure.

gubbs

Shay Stephens wrote:

My most common RAW processing includes of course exposure and white balance, but I also regularly change the brightness and shadow sliders as well as the noise suppresion and the vignette control. The brightness and shadow control let me control the gamma and contrast of the shot. Once I have that image, not much else get's changed in PS except if cloning is needed or a blended exposure.

Shay,

What are the advantages/dis-advantages of doing the adjustments in raw, as opposed to doing them in PS, or is it a personel preference thing?

Thanks

Guzzler

Adobe has fairly decent explination on RAW vs JPG

Understanding Digital Raw Capture (PDF)

Shay Stephens

gubbs wrote:

Shay,

What are the advantages/dis-advantages of doing the adjustments in raw, as opposed to doing them in PS, or is it a personel preference thing?

Thanks

I personally feel the editing goes faster and more consistantly with RAW than using actions to do the same processing on jpgs. But in addition to that, adjusting the exposure and WB in the RAW converter gives far better results in the highlights and the color. Once you adjust WB in RAW doing it with a JPG will make you cringe hehehe. And with the 20D camera I can pull back at least 2 stops of over exposure and still retain details. You can't do that with a jpg.

You have been warned! hahaha

DavidTO

I love RAW, and I really like using Capture 1 for processing. (JPG problems aside). I find it much more useful and easier to use than PS for processing. It's not cheap, however. Starts at $100 and works it's way up to $500. You can try it for free with the 30 day demo.

Everytime I shoot JPG I regret not having shot RAW. It does add time to your workflow, but not in actual time at the computer. Adjusting levels, WB, etc. takes the same amount of time, or maybe less. Then you have to process it, which I'm fine with walking away from it for a while.

If you are going to use PS for RAW conversions, check out Dr. Brown's Image Processor

But RAW is definitely the way to go if you are publishing a book. Just the fact that you could go back and re-process losslessly in CMYK, or make other changes to accomodate the publisher's needs.

photocat

Shay Stephens wrote:

My most common RAW processing includes of course exposure and white balance, but I also regularly change the brightness and shadow sliders as well as the noise suppresion and the vignette control. The brightness and shadow control let me control the gamma and contrast of the shot. Once I have that image, not much else get's changed in PS except if cloning is needed or a blended exposure.

Can I ask you Shay how you do noise suppresion? I am really interested in this one but have so far not found a good manual way of doing it...
That is if you have time to explain. Most grateful

Guzzler

The one thing that still amazes me with shooting RAW, it doesn't matter what the white balance setting is set on the camera. Which is really nice when shooting with difficult lighting. You can adjust it with better precision in post processing.

For me, it just depends on what I am photographing if I use RAW. It turns out to be 50/50, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

photocat

If you are going to use PS for RAW conversions, check out Dr. Brown's Image Processor

But RAW is definitely the way to go if you are publishing a book. Just the fact that you could go back and re-process losslessly in CMYK, or make other changes to accomodate the publisher's needs.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the laugh... I had forgotten how funny Dr. Brown was and is.
I bookmarked his page, and will be spending lots of time here, I know...
Thanks guys. I am trying to get my head around this new raw scene...

I love this site, all the smartness that hangs here rubbs off a bit on me.
Which makes me a happy camper. (If I can remember 10 procent of all your knowledge, I will be very happy)

Shay Stephens

photocat wrote:

Can I ask you Shay how you do noise suppresion? I am really interested in this one but have so far not found a good manual way of doing it...
That is if you have time to explain. Most grateful

I mostly utilize chroma noise suppression. I use it in the photoshop raw converter. But you can do the same thing with a jpg by copying the image and pasting it as a new layer, set the blending of that new layer to "color" and then gaussian blur the new layer by the amount that gives you the best color noise (chroma) suppression without desaturating the image too much. It is a trial and error adjustment that depends on how noisy the image is.

I rarely if ever try to reduce luminance noise.

mgound

Great article...Thanks

Guzzler wrote:

Adobe has fairly decent explination on RAW vs JPG

Understanding Digital Raw Capture (PDF)

pathfinder

Shay Stephens wrote:

My most common RAW processing includes of course exposure and white balance, but I also regularly change the brightness and shadow sliders as well as the noise suppresion and the vignette control. The brightness and shadow control let me control the gamma and contrast of the shot. Once I have that image, not much else get's changed in PS except if cloning is needed or a blended exposure.

I am with Shay here, and use PS CS Raw convertor for the reason he mentioned - I adjust color temperature if needed, adjust exposure until I am just below blowing the highlights ( Pres alt while adjusting the exposure slider and you can see which pixels exceed 255,255,255), adjust shadow levels as needed ( the black levels can be seen again by pressing alt while using the slider to see which pixels will be black 0,0,0), I adjust the contrast and brightness as needed, up the saturation some, I then go to page 2 and reduce the sharpness ( I will sharpen in PS after I am all done with the image and am ready to print) and will smooth the luminance or color noise.
Then my image bangs into PS as a 16 bit 4096x2731 size image. And like Shay, a little cloning or slight bit of curves and I am done.. Not much more work than a 'direct from camera' jpg, but a much better image.

The BEST information I have found about Adobe's RAW converter in PS CS is found in Bruce Frasier's Real World volume "Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS" I recommend it highly. Russel Brown said in the blurb on the back "If you want to understand Camera Raw, then look no further than this book. Trust me on this one" Bruce Frasier is a co-author of "Real World Color Management" also.

Sam

photocat wrote:

Can I ask you Shay how you do noise suppresion? I am really interested in this one but have so far not found a good manual way of doing it...
That is if you have time to explain. Most grateful

Just to add yet another choice in the mix for you. I have a program called Neat Image. It operates from within PS as a plug in. I think this is a great noice supression package. I have full control, or I can let it operate automatically.

Sam

photocat

Sam wrote:

Just to add yet another choice in the mix for you. I have a program called Neat Image. It operates from within PS as a plug in. I think this is a great noice supression package. I have full control, or I can let it operate automatically.

Sam

I have neat image Sam, I bought it last week. I find my nikon to have a lot of noise once I go over 800 asa.
I try to do things manually first though, so I can learn how neat image works. So far I have used neat on auto, and see the results, but I think it would be nice if I would know how it does that...
I can be wrong though, if there are filters, plugins and prograns to do all that stuff, why bother with learning it youself?
There is that little voice in my head that says "If you want to do it good, you need to know the principle".

Thanks Shay and pathfinder for the mix, I am printing your texts... so I can do it step by step.

One more question: You say I do it in raw converter... Is that a progr or is it a feature in photoshop? If I am correct the sliders you are talking about are the level sliders, or the brightness and contrast sliders. How do you bring these up in raw converter? Or am I missing a big link here?

Thank you all for your input. It is much appreciated!!!

PerezDesignGroup

And NeatImage works great on scanned prints, too. Sorry for the off-topicness.

pathfinder

photocat wrote:

I have neat image Sam, I bought it last week. I find my nikon to have a lot of noise once I go over 800 asa.
I try to do things manually first though, so I can learn how neat image works. So far I have used neat on auto, and see the results, but I think it would be nice if I would know how it does that...
I can be wrong though, if there are filters, plugins and prograns to do all that stuff, why bother with learning it youself?
There is that little voice in my head that says "If you want to do it good, you need to know the principle".

Thanks Shay and pathfinder for the mix, I am printing your texts... so I can do it step by step.

One more question: You say I do it in raw converter... Is that a progr or is it a feature in photoshop? If I am correct the sliders you are talking about are the level sliders, or the brightness and contrast sliders. How do you bring these up in raw converter? Or am I missing a big link here?

Thank you all for your input. It is much appreciated!!!

The RAW convertor is where Raw files are opened and evaluated in PS CS, after clicking on them in the File browser. All the sliders I discussed are in the RAW converter box - BEFORE the image is passed into Photoshop as a an image to be edited. The RAW converter box actually precedes entering the the standard Photohshop workspace (altho the RAW converter is run by and with Photoshop open and running)
That was the point of my post, that since much of the processing of the RAW file replaces levels, curve, etc in PHotoshop itself. This is a real big advantage as the RAW file has much more data and there is less loss of data than when editing in PS as an 8 bit file and it does not take any more time really.
I strongly rec you look at Bruce Frasier's book to really get the most of of the RAW converter. Like much of Photoshop, what looks like a fairly simple menu of choices, offers a great deal of power and utility to someone with an understanding and some knowledge about the Raw converter, but that knowledge is not widely displayed, but is in Frasier's book. I should be getting an commission from him, ( I don't) but it it will explain the converter in ways that are not possible easily here on line. It gets into 14 bit images, Gamma, and the difference between human vision and imaging chips, and then explains what to do with each control in the converter box. And demonstrates tips that are quite useful but not obvious to at least to me.
Niose filters like Neat Image and Noise Ninja are useful for noisy images, but it is better to not have the noise in your image in the first place if you can do that with the proper choices of exposure and image processing from the RAW data.

pathfinder

photocat wrote:

........

One more question: You say I do it in raw converter... Is that a progr or is it a feature in photoshop? If I am correct the sliders you are talking about are the level sliders, or the brightness and contrast sliders. How do you bring these up in raw converter? Or am I missing a big link here?

Thank you all for your input. It is much appreciated!!!

Catherine - When you open a RAW image, found in the FILE BROWSER window, you will see a dialogue box that looks like this ...


You can see from the title bar at the top that this image came from a Canon 1DMkii .CR2 image - shot at ISO 100 1/250 f5.6 200mm -- Nikon images will read NEF, of course.

The color space the image will pass into when it is transferred into PS is Adobe RGB ( but you can also chose sRGB or Pro Photo RGB or Color match RGB - if you aren't sure which to use, just use sRGB or Adobe RGB)

The image will be 16 bits and 4096 x 2731 - No real genius - here I just like to enlarge them slightly before importing them - this step is not necessary though. And I set the resolution to 240 pixels/inch - you may prefer more or less - (I am sure we will find someone on line to tell me I am doing it all wrong.) It just seems to work for me. Storage is cheap these days. Some may chose 150 or even 300 - but this is the real place to upsize images if you think you will be printing larger images than usual. I want mine capable of at least 13 x 19

The first step, as Shay said, is adjusting the Exposure and the Shadow sliders


I adust color balance first if it needs it, but if I adjust the WB of my camera to actual lighting conditions and skip using AWB (I highly rec this step!!) I rarely need to change this very much.

There is a white balance eye dropper in the upper left corner that really should be used to sample a neutral grey that can help balance a difficult image. Some times I split the difference between the color temp the camera says I shot at and the one chosen by using the eyedropper in an area of neutral gray. ( grey or gray in the UK??):D Ultimately you season to taste!

This image shows how to adjust the exposure and shadows sliders. If you press the alt key(wintel) or the option key ( MAC!! ) while using the mouse on the slider for Exposure the image turns black and only the pixels that turn white are blown, so you can see how far you can push the histogram to the right before irretrievebly losing data.

Then Using the mouse on the Shadow slider while holding down the alt/option keys the imge will turn completely white except for the pixels that are being pushed to black. This allows you to judge the shadow detail you wish to retain. Setting black levels is very important to create depth in the color image.

Then I adjust the brightness and contrast sparingly, if needed. I usually up the saturation of the 1DMkii files as they come out of the camera slightly low key to retain all the subtle detail.
You can then go to the Detail tab and adjust sharpening( which I tend to turn off as I prefer to sharpen as my last step prior to printing in PS). And you can adjust for noise in Chroma and Luminance if needed.

Hit OK and you are almost done - and you have not even entered Photoshop's workspace yet. Save your image after transferring to PS as a tiff or psd. I tend to save psd's myself.
Time to hoist a cold one or two for the folks in the UK

fish

Nice primer, pathfinder!

pathfinder

fish wrote:

Nice primer, pathfinder!

Thanks, Fish. Any suggestions or omissions?

fish

pathfinder wrote:

Thanks, Fish. Any suggestions or omissions?

Looks pretty good to me.

photocat

fish wrote:

Looks pretty good to me.

WOOOWWW, and to me pathfinder. You are the evil twin of Scott Kelby it seems...
I finally found the window yesterday night. I had no clue what you all were talking about because I had the wrong raw plugin, who only showed me two options: exposure and white balance. (I had the NEF-plugin).
It finally dawned on me to check online if I had the right plugin, I did not, so I downloaded the right one, and there it was, I finally understood the joke.
IT IS GREAT !!!! I should have discovered this years ago...
(But then I was still poor and had no money for a camera to start with)
I did some pics yesterday evening and in combination with Dr. Browns image script I have found the perfect way of working.

Pathfinder, thank you so much for the in depth tutorial, now I need practive to see the blown out pixels and such...
I am amazed to see how much better the quality of the pictures is...

Thanks to most of you here on Dgrin I am really becoming a better photographer.

ginger_55

Is there anything I should know about adjusting for noise? Anything?

This tutorial is great, the book is more than I want to spend right now.....in fact, anything is more than I want to spend. Put the RAW book on my wish list, so I will remember.

But the noise slider, how do I know how far to move it? Are there two?
Chroma? Lumenesce? This is the only part that is a bit fuzzy to me, and I would have loved to have known about it with my Christmas Angel.

ginger (a penny saved is that much closer to a 20D or paying for heartworm pills, depending on priorities.)