Basic Help

jlg84 · July 17, 2007

Apologies if this topic has already been beaten to death, but perhaps this will prompt a one-stop shopping sort of response that will help out others besides me, too.

Basically, the story is this: I am about to go on a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tibet and want to do my best to ensure that my photos turn out as well as they can, given my own limitations. I shoot in RAW, using a Canon 20D with a bunch of lenses. The issue however is that I don't think I'm doing a very good job with post-processing. I have both Photoshop CS3 and Aperture 1.5 (the latter being a new acquisition), and in the past I have found that the enormous number of photos I take makes the process very long, especially since I find that each and every photo requires some exposure adjustment.

So, my question is:

1. Is it normal for just about every photo to require adjustment in RAW?
2. Is there a simple way to automate (or semi-automate) the process?
3. Is there a good online or book-version guide to doing this stuff? (I live in China, where there is not much information available in English)
4. Does anyone have any other advice for me?

nikos · July 17, 2007

1. Is it normal for just about every photo to require adjustment in RAW?

Not if your camera setting were right the first time. But if you're stickler for perfection, you may want to fine tune the exposure a bit. When shooting, keep an eye on the histogram and try to keep it slightly biased to the right. If you need to make exposure adjustments later, it's better to have to move the slider to the left than to bump up the exposure which will possibly introduce noise in your image.

2. Is there a simple way to automate (or semi-automate) the process?

In Adobe Raw, you can open multiple images at once. So, if you happened to shoot a batch of 20 photos from one location where the lighting is pretty much the same, you can select them all in Adobe Bridge, double click on one of them and they will all be opened in ACR.

Once, there, you can work on one image and once you're happy with the results, you click on the 'Select All' button at the top of the thumbnail viewer on the left and then the 'Synchronise' button. This will apply the settings of the image you worked on to the rest of those photos.

3. Is there a good online or book-version guide to doing this stuff? (I live in China, where there is not much information available in English)

I'll let others chime in on the books but there are also tons of videos that may help you. I don't have the links at hand right now.

HTH,
Nikos

claudermilk · July 17, 2007

1) Yes. That's the point of shooting RAW. Now as to how much processing is necessary depends on you & what you want from the image. At the least, they will all require some sharpening. At worst, you will have to spend time tweaking missed exposure, wrong WB, tilted horizon, sensor dust, etc. If you're tweaking exposure on every single photo, you need to look at your techinique or possibly camera calibration.

2) Most RAW conveters have some batching ability. That is part of why I chose Bibble--it has very strong batching capabilities. ACR has some as well through Bridge & PS.

3) The book I found most useful was Bruce Frasier's Real World Camera RAW. It is very much ACR-centric, but the concepts are universal.

4) Just because you took 1000 images in RAW does not mean you must convert 1000 images. Take a look at thedambook.com (here's a PDF of Chapter 2 to point you in the right direction). I only convert the images I immediately deem worth spending the time on, that cuts down on processing time right away.

As you gain proficiency, you will get faster at the postprocessing stage. The good news is with shooting RAW, you now have a "negative" you get to revisit and re-process after you have learned something new, and possibly come out with a better final image.

pathfinder · July 17, 2007

jlg84 wrote:

Apologies if this topic has already been beaten to death, but perhaps this will prompt a one-stop shopping sort of response that will help out others besides me, too.

Basically, the story is this: I am about to go on a perhaps once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tibet and want to do my best to ensure that my photos turn out as well as they can, given my own limitations. I shoot in RAW, using a Canon 20D with a bunch of lenses. The issue however is that I don't think I'm doing a very good job with post-processing. I have both Photoshop CS3 and Aperture 1.5 (the latter being a new acquisition), and in the past I have found that the enormous number of photos I take makes the process very long, especially since I find that each and every photo requires some exposure adjustment.

So, my question is:

1. Is it normal for just about every photo to require adjustment in RAW?
2. Is there a simple way to automate (or semi-automate) the process?
3. Is there a good online or book-version guide to doing this stuff? (I live in China, where there is not much information available in English)
4. Does anyone have any other advice for me?

1: It depends, partly on how you meter and shoot, and how much of a stickler you are for image quality. I do tend to adjust each image in RAW conversion because I think this is optimum. But it does take longer. If you shoot in Manual Mode when the light is not changing, you will minimize the variation in exposure from shot to shot. The sunlight does not change that much out of doors - unless you move from sun to shade or clouds occlude the sun. It is a matter of proper metering and exposure.

2: As posted above, if all the shots were all shot at the same time in the same light with the same aperture and shutter speed ( or at least the same EV) then you can set the RAW converter to open them all with the same settings. ARC 4.1 ( available with PSCS3 ) will open them all at the same time with the same settings)

3: Excellent post processing takes some time to learn. I have been shooting digital for years and I am still learning something new every week.

New products, new techniques, new ideas.

4: Read the threads here on dgrin and the Tutorials here on dgrin as well. There is a ton of good material abut post processing here for someone who is willing to dig a bit.

jlg84 · July 18, 2007

Thanks; next question
Thanks for the help; I downloaded Lightroom yesterday and found that it makes a lot of what I want to do easier, and the tips in the tutorial section are great--I really feel like I'm getting a much better grip on the situation.

Now, to the next question: when you return from a trip, or a shoot, or whatever (I am *not* a professional photographer, if that was not already obvious), and have a ton of RAW photos to go through, what do people do to archive the originals? Is it best to leave them in RAW, or to save to .DNG, or what? Do you save ALL of your photos, or just the ones that are 'keepers'?

pyrtek · July 18, 2007

jlg84 wrote:

Now, to the next question: when you return from a trip, or a shoot, or whatever (I am *not* a professional photographer, if that was not already obvious), and have a ton of RAW photos to go through, what do people do to archive the originals? Is it best to leave them in RAW, or to save to .DNG, or what? Do you save ALL of your photos, or just the ones that are 'keepers'?

I save all my RAWs, even ones I don't process. Storage is cheap these days,
so I don't see a point in throwing anything away. If nothing else, they'll be
worth a laugh or two 20 years down the line.

As for the processed pictures, I save the PSDs of the really time consuming
edits which I'd hate to repeat. The rest are saved only as max quality JPGs
and uploaded to my gallery, which also serves as a backup of the processed
images. I'll probably want to mirror my online gallery sooner or later (just in
case).

Richard · July 18, 2007

jlg84 wrote:

Now, to the next question: when you return from a trip, or a shoot, or whatever (I am *not* a professional photographer, if that was not already obvious), and have a ton of RAW photos to go through, what do people do to archive the originals? Is it best to leave them in RAW, or to save to .DNG, or what? Do you save ALL of your photos, or just the ones that are 'keepers'?

I cull the pics as the first step. Like bad wine, bad shots don't improve with age. If anything, old shots that I thought were good at the time don't look so great two years later.

I save the RAW files in their native format. .DNG still seems like more of a promise than a reality, and if it really takes off someday, I have my archive arranged so that a batch conversion will be easy, if lengthy. I also save a maximum quality JPG of the intermediate file produced by my RAW converter. When I get more disk space, I will save this as a compressed TIFF instead. Unless it is an elaborate project, I don't save the PSDs.

How much you save really depends on how much storage you have, how good your catalog system is in finding stuff and how likely you think it is that you will want to go back and change something. I have a pretty good catalog system in place which lets me find old shots easily, but I only rarely go back and rework a shot. YMMV.

Hope this helps.

Basic Help

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