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Workflow and settings - RAW - Bridge
drcarl
Registered Users Posts: 104 Major grins
Warm greetings to all awesome fellow Smuggers.
OK...(so much to learn, first a little history)...a friend gave me a nice Canon 10D. The price was right, yet I needed a lens. Upselling myself along the way (you know how it goes; I was initially thinking a Sigma for $200) I finally "settled" on a Canon L Series 24-105 US IS zoom because it is "optically excellent." With the 580 EX Flash, and an off-camera cord (and other toys) I am happy with this set-up, for now.
I've been shooting for a few decades. I love imagry. I love computers. I love Photoshop. I write "too long" e-mails and posts. Oh, well.
Here's my situation: The more I learn, the less I like how I have captured and processed my earlier images. For fun (and for spec and for art) I'll be shooting same Native American dancers this weekend. I want to start shooting ~everything~ RAW, but fear all the settings and have not figured-out a reasonable workflow. Right now it takes me WAY too long to process shots and, well, even after reading a LOT here (OMG), I just don't have my mind wrapped around the all details yet. I must have some sort of plan if I will be shooting upwards of 1000 images and don't want to sequester myself for a week sorting and PP-ing.
I've tried to teach myself everything I need to know by reading here for something like 24 hours straight. (You can laugh now). There is SO much great info here. wow.
I need a workflow plan complete with settings tweaks so that I can capture and process the shoot efficiently now...without wrecking the shots...and so that I can resume learning over the weeks/months/years to come.
By "wrecking" I am thinking about white balance, color-correction and sharpening. I know the RAW file stays intact so the original "negative" is always there, yet I want to do it as right as I can from the start. I also understand that there are calibration and workspace issues along the way to a print.
It's frustrating knowing how awesome RAW and Bridge and Photoshop CS2 are, and yet fearing going to RAW. I have avoided some odd color shifts by not "fixing" anything and I KNOW that's not right. Still, I KNOW that what I see on my monitor is ~not~ what I get --either across the room on another monitor, nor with the final prints (which I have not even ordered one of yet, let alone the test prints.)
With so many variables, it's almost impossible to ask these question:
I am using a Canon 10D with a nice lens; all shots in RAW. For PP I'll use Bridge and Photoshop on the way to printing at SM/EZ Prints. What are my safe settings and workflow? I understand this is almost like asking for 100% freedom AND 100% security. Still....I have hope. (I could try to forget about RAW for now - argh!)
I found the sRGB setting in Bridge and unable to find the default setting, I experimented and notice that it's staying on sRGB so that's good. I reset the compression there to 10 instead of 12. I've set the dpi to 300. I'll save all .jpg's at 6 MP. I fear custom tweaking because of my newness to SM and to any kind of RAW (and other) PP due to a lack of confidence with my display and since I hsve not had the time to order test prints.
I'll stop. Any help/suggestions/recipes are appreciated.
Oh! I put a couple of .jpg's into a gallery called "test prints" on my site. One is "as shot" and for the other I changed the WB a tad and increased the sharpness. The look almost the same to me.
BTW, these test shots (and everything else posted so far) DO NOT represent my photo skills and are ONLY (bad) test shots there to mess with. I shot the "test shots" after a few beers under mixed lighting and just before I was intorduced to a new food: smelt. (It was very good).
Thank you in advance for any help anyone can offer.
As a perfectionist, it's hard for me...I want to streamline and simplify.
Enjoy the day,
Dr Carl - drcarl.smugmug.com
.
OK...(so much to learn, first a little history)...a friend gave me a nice Canon 10D. The price was right, yet I needed a lens. Upselling myself along the way (you know how it goes; I was initially thinking a Sigma for $200) I finally "settled" on a Canon L Series 24-105 US IS zoom because it is "optically excellent." With the 580 EX Flash, and an off-camera cord (and other toys) I am happy with this set-up, for now.
I've been shooting for a few decades. I love imagry. I love computers. I love Photoshop. I write "too long" e-mails and posts. Oh, well.
Here's my situation: The more I learn, the less I like how I have captured and processed my earlier images. For fun (and for spec and for art) I'll be shooting same Native American dancers this weekend. I want to start shooting ~everything~ RAW, but fear all the settings and have not figured-out a reasonable workflow. Right now it takes me WAY too long to process shots and, well, even after reading a LOT here (OMG), I just don't have my mind wrapped around the all details yet. I must have some sort of plan if I will be shooting upwards of 1000 images and don't want to sequester myself for a week sorting and PP-ing.
I've tried to teach myself everything I need to know by reading here for something like 24 hours straight. (You can laugh now). There is SO much great info here. wow.
I need a workflow plan complete with settings tweaks so that I can capture and process the shoot efficiently now...without wrecking the shots...and so that I can resume learning over the weeks/months/years to come.
By "wrecking" I am thinking about white balance, color-correction and sharpening. I know the RAW file stays intact so the original "negative" is always there, yet I want to do it as right as I can from the start. I also understand that there are calibration and workspace issues along the way to a print.
It's frustrating knowing how awesome RAW and Bridge and Photoshop CS2 are, and yet fearing going to RAW. I have avoided some odd color shifts by not "fixing" anything and I KNOW that's not right. Still, I KNOW that what I see on my monitor is ~not~ what I get --either across the room on another monitor, nor with the final prints (which I have not even ordered one of yet, let alone the test prints.)
With so many variables, it's almost impossible to ask these question:
- Is there a really basic recipe for all the settings along the path to a print?
- What should my workflow be?
I am using a Canon 10D with a nice lens; all shots in RAW. For PP I'll use Bridge and Photoshop on the way to printing at SM/EZ Prints. What are my safe settings and workflow? I understand this is almost like asking for 100% freedom AND 100% security. Still....I have hope. (I could try to forget about RAW for now - argh!)
I found the sRGB setting in Bridge and unable to find the default setting, I experimented and notice that it's staying on sRGB so that's good. I reset the compression there to 10 instead of 12. I've set the dpi to 300. I'll save all .jpg's at 6 MP. I fear custom tweaking because of my newness to SM and to any kind of RAW (and other) PP due to a lack of confidence with my display and since I hsve not had the time to order test prints.
I'll stop. Any help/suggestions/recipes are appreciated.
Oh! I put a couple of .jpg's into a gallery called "test prints" on my site. One is "as shot" and for the other I changed the WB a tad and increased the sharpness. The look almost the same to me.
BTW, these test shots (and everything else posted so far) DO NOT represent my photo skills and are ONLY (bad) test shots there to mess with. I shot the "test shots" after a few beers under mixed lighting and just before I was intorduced to a new food: smelt. (It was very good).
Thank you in advance for any help anyone can offer.
As a perfectionist, it's hard for me...I want to streamline and simplify.
Enjoy the day,
Dr Carl - drcarl.smugmug.com
.
0
Comments
Here's my workflow:
Open images in Bridge. Cull. Now, for my remaining images, if I have some all with the same lighting, I'll open them in RAW (all of them) and then adjust the WB on one, maybe do some fill-light, or other exposure correction, and even global color adjustments, even sharpness, then synch all my settings in RAW for those files. Then I click done. I can then create my jpgs from these raw files all via Bridge.
For landscapes and such, I do them one at a time usually, and really only do whitebalance adjustments in RAW - maybe exposure too, but it depends.
There's no 'one-size fits all' recipe, I'm afraid.
I, like you, use sRGB and photoshop 10 jpg compression. That's great
Now upload, and set your galleries to auto color and proof delay - and you're done
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Thank you Andy,
I'll try that flow now on an Apple Squeezing event I shot last weekend.
I will be looking with great anticipation if there is some kind of obvious way to ~synch them all~ in RAW...as I try it, maybe I'll be offered that choice...WOO - I found the Synchronize button!
All from Bridge (new to me) I will cull. Then I will either sort into separate folders those with similar lighting, then open them all in RAW (I'm guessing that from bridge it might be a Ctrl-A/select all thing), tweak, and go for "done" ... or, the same routine by ~selecting~ shots similarly lit, without the bother of sorting into folders (if I think I can keep track of the one's I've done).
I'll try it with two shots to see if they both get PP-ed the same.
I'm still fearful that the colors I see are not what they digitally are...
I read the nice tutorial on sharpening with the USM in Photoshop, and now don't see the same options in Bridge. I will just play with the slider and go with what I see as acceptable ("to taste") at 100% magnification.
I have no idea where to safely set the Luminance Smoothing and Color Noise Reduction surrently set at "0" and "25" respectively.
THEN I need to decide what file size to save them in. (1.6, 2.8, 6.3, 11, 17, 28 MP). Sure not going to save them as 28 MP's I don't think.
Cudos to the PROOF DELAY option. Wow. That's awesome (like the rest of the site). Saves a lot of time not having to tweak shots never printed.
Next, I'll follow the tutorial on making a watermark....
Thanks again, and again
Dr Carl