Originally posted by creative69 Great images! do you mind sharing how you prepare your images for web?
Thanks so much! To be honest, I don't think I do anything special, I don't even work in layers or do half the stuff I see people write about. Here is my process, maybe I am not alone...
1) shoot at -.3 ev in raw plus jpg to second card. Only use jpg for emergency backup. I'd shoot raw plus raw but I don't want to sacrifice the write speed.
2) I use adobe acr as the front end to photoshop, and pentax dcu only on the occasional pixel shift photo.
3) I do as much tweaking as i possibly can in ACR. Set lens profile, tweak levels, basic sharpening and noise reduction done here if needed. I tend to expose for saving highlights and push shadows when needed. The ACR auto setting is usually useless in high contrast or tricky lighting and tends to over expose, so it's only good for taking an experimental peek, then undo it and do your own thing. The FX tab has a remove haze slider which is another effective way to tweak micro contrast and not as harsh as the clarity slider.
4) save to max quality 12 jpg. In new jpg folder.
5) pull up jpg in photoshop and crop to taste then resize for web, this is where i will apply final unsharp mask while viewing at 300% to make sure maximum sharpness but back off when artifacts and halos begin to show. Done.
One thing I do to speed things along is I highlight and open multiple files I know were shot with the same lens in same light at same time in Photoshop, which brings them all up in ACR. Then in ACR, at the top i hit select all. Then I go through the tabs and set my lens profile, noise reduction levels, basic sharpening, etc. then Unselect all, then work on them one at at time as stated above to tweak them as they might individually need. Saves a lot of time.
It may sound like a lot of work, but it really goes rather quickly once you get a routine down pat. Especially if you shoot a decent image to start with that doesnt need much tweaking. I don't waste time on stinkers or multiples of the same image, it's never worth the effort or disk space, I use the trash can symbol on stinkers and dupes in ACR and let them get deleted at the time I save to jpg.
I am really a hack compared to the masters on this forum, but hope that helps,
Eric