[trevorgrout]

Hi,

I am just starting to shoot RAW. Being new to post processing, I see there are lots of things you can do to process the RAW data.

So my question is: Are there certain procedures that you all do to every photo in post processing? What are common procedures that you all do to your photos and more importantly why do you do them? Do you do different standard procedures depending on the light available (dark room, outdoors, sunset/sunrise)?

I am also doing more research online and etc, but I am curious if people have a preset procedure to process their photos before they go in and fine tune photos.

If this question makes sense I would appreciate your input. I am using RAW therapy. My brother was showing me different mosaicing techniques/algorithims that have different strengths. Hence my question as to what other techniques/ processes do you all do to your photos (and why).

If you all have any useful website links/books that would be appreciated as well.

Thanks
Trevor

[rormeister]

Hi Trevor,
Really a lot depends on the tools you plan to use to do the processing. Whether you go the route of Lightroom, or PS/Bridge, Pentax's own processor, or even GIMP, each provides a method to sort through your images. Lightroom for example is really all about the cataloging and qualifying of images before even touching a pixel. In all, the steps can be simplified to a quick review of the images to cull out and absolute losers. Some will catalog or group images by subject, place, or event. It really depends on how you want to use the images later on, and how easily it is to find them. Which ever method you use, it's always a good idea to save/burn the originals for safekeeping before doing any sort of tweaking.
Workflow is really an individual taste. Over time, and with practice you will develop your own favorite way to process your images.

More to your question, I personally use PS CS5 which has a new feature called Mini-Bridge. Opening the image takes me directly to Adobe Camera Raw. This version is really quite amazing and there are capabilities that will astound, but you really have to learn the application. After doing the initial cleanup you can then either save as it, or take them into Photoshop for even more work. Beauty is you're working in a non-destructive manner keeping your original image in tact while playing with the outcome.

[mysticcowboy]

rormeister is right. Processing RAW really depends on what you want to achieve. It's good to know what your camera normally does with JPEGS, as that gives a point for comparison. RAW files have had no sharpening applied to them and are also often less saturated than the typical JPEG. So those are good places to start.

The first thing I look at with a photo set is white balance. I don't use the Pentax conversion software but use Adobe products. With either Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, which comes with all recent versions of Photoshop, I manually white balance one image, then make a preset to apply to the rest of the photos shot at the same time. I typically shoot my first frame with a white or neutral gray card for reference. Silky Pix, on which the Pentax software is pretty sophisticated, so I imagine that you can do something similar.

I then go through all the keepers and adjust exposure, if necessary. That may be all you need, other than a bit of sharpening. Beyond that, well.....

[Michaelina2]

I'm sure there are others, but the best book on this subject I've found so far is...

Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom…

It addresses on how to get the most out of LR3's "Develop" module. The author provides 12 RAW images then proceeds to give you a detailed explanation of the "whys and hows" he used to make the image dance to his tune. You can follow his workflow step-by-step and dulplicate his results. While LR3 is the focus of the book, his explanation is "principle" based so it can easily be extrapolated for use with another software package.

Rather than asking you to endure my dronning on about the author's approach, I suggest you read the books attached customer reviews.

In a nutshell, highly recommended, IMHO.

Enjoy your day, and cheers...

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Last edited by Michaelina2; 08-08-2010 at 04:16 AM.

[trevorgrout]

Ok, thanks for the feedback everyone.

So, I have a follow up question:

I am using Raw Therapee. I can choose different profiles. Is there any where I can access or download other custom profiles? I would like to see what other people use for their profiles and then tweak it how I like it.

[twitch]

So my question is: Are there certain procedures that you all do to every photo in post processing? What are common procedures that you all do to your photos and more importantly why do you do them?

Yes there is. I've defined a basic preset which is applied to every photo on import, that preset does an auto adjustment of exposure, a tiny bump in contrast, and applies edge sharpening to the whole image. My manual editing typically involves cropping the image, straightening it if applicable, brushing in a small amount of local sharpening (eg to eyes in a portrait), applying a subtle vignette and rating the image. That's about all I do, takes 2 minutes tops for the "keepers". The rest I toss in the trash.

[Derridale]

Recommendations will also depend to some extent on whether you're using Mac or PC.

I use a Mac (as do many others here) and I do almost everything in Aperture 3. It used to be just an image management tool, with little processing of images, but has grown into an all-in-one solution for 95% of what I do. Numerous plugins now work directly in Aperture (Noise Ninja, Nik, Topaz, etc etc) and I find that although I have Photoshop CS5, I only need to flip over to it occasionally for some pixel tweaking. The rest is all done within Aperture, non-destructively, and the final, first-time conversion to JPG or TIFF is done at the end on export.

And I'm pretty much the same as Twitch - a basic preset applied to incoming RAW files. And Aperture does this from a profile for the camera - in my case two K20D bodies.