Post Process

[Lost Canadian]

Joash, command/shift/3 on a Mac to snap a screen shot, command/shift/4 for a localized screen shot. It's saved to the desktop as a PNG so you may want to convert it to a jpg if you're using it for the web.

As for presets, I have a few, the flatten preset which is applied on import to all of my images so I don't actually go through some of those first steps everytime. It's really just a replacement to Adobe's preset adjustments. I also have a few split tone presets for monochrome images, and a number of different tone curves ranging from very flat to very aggressive that I use as a preview to give me a couple ideas as to where I may want to take an image.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Great thread Trevor. My work flow is similar almost always done in Lightroom. For me I find some of the preset Canon camera calibrations are a good starting point but it depends a lot on the image I am working on.

Many times I will flip from landscape, to standard, and few times to neutral just see which gives me the closest starting point that fits my vision. Many times landscape is way too saturated on the blues and greens but sometimes I like it that way. Most of the time I find myself starting with the standard calibration and working from there.

Once I decide on that starting point the rest of our process is similar. I don't have any graduated ND filters so I do use the LR grad ND tool frequently on landscape images. It has helped me several times to save an image that otherwise would have been out of balance.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Brad, with those faux grad filters unfortunately you can only recover what's actually been captured, if the original exposure falls off the right end of the histogram nothing is bringing it back. I'm sure you know that though. Unfortunate as it is we can try and recover some blown highlights, but what ends up happening is you get unatural banding at the edge of areas that contain information in the file and the areas that are blown out. As I had mentioned before, Adobe defaults the brightness setting to +50. Right away any highlights will be pushed over the edge because of this. Before using the faux grad try pulling the brightness down, if you start to see banding push your exposure up, but just until the banding goes away. It'll still be blown out but it will look more natural and the tonalities will be smoother. You could also work in reverse and pull your entire exposure down until you recover some detail or start to see banding, then use your brushes or grads to add exposure back into the shadows. I've found that this can actually work quite well for color, and really well for black and white. If you give it a shot let me know how it works for you.

 

[Lost Canadian]

You know I was thinking, it might be interesting to offer up the same RAW file for everyone to play with to see what kind of results we each get, and then we can give a detailed account of our processes for that shot. If anyone is interested in this idea let me know.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Great advise as always Trevor. :victory: I agree with you but will also try out your tips.

I like the idea of posting up an untouched RAW file and have several of us apply our unique processing steps and compare the results. That could be a major learning experience.

 

[Lost Canadian]

If there's a shot someone would like to offer up I'm game, or I can offer up a shot of my own. I'll leave it up to you guys. If you want one of mine, let me know what kind of shot you'd like, people, landscape, etc.

 

[Tucson T4R]

If there's a shot someone would like to offer up I'm game, or I can offer up a shot of my own. I'll leave it up to you guys. If you want one of mine, let me know what kind of shot you'd like, people, landscape, etc.

I vote for a landscape image to play with but I'll give anything a try.

 

[nwoods]

You know I was thinking, it might be interesting to offer up the same RAW file for everyone to play with to see what kind of results we each get, and then we can give a detailed account of our processes for that shot. If anyone is interested in this idea let me know.

I'm in - Yes, a landscape would be good.

 

[taco2go]

I'm in too. Let's see what mischief we can conjure up.

 

[Pathfinder]

I wlll join the fray as well, if allowed.

jjbong and I have been having similar discussions about variations in post processing here - http://www.dgrin.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58 for the last couple months.

I process most of my routine RAW images via Lightroom3 if all they need is global editing. I use Adobe Camera RAW for those images that I anticipate will need to be rendered via Smart Objects, or Photomatix for those multi exposure images I plan to run through HDR.

I do find the new camera profiles introduced in LR3 and CS5 to be major improvements over their earlier versions. The improvements in noise reduction, and the improvements in the Lens corrections tools are also quite worthwhile.

The shots of the old cars in Cuba are great, and I loved the use of color for emphasis, and diminished saturation for the background. Nicely done!

 

[Lost Canadian]

For those interested in processing a RAW send me a PM with your email, and I'll send you the file. I tried to find a file that could be processed a lot of different ways and finally decided on one pulled from my 98' archives, back when I just got into photography. I look forward to seeing what you guys do with it.

 

[nwoods]

Okay - I'll go. First off. Nothing much to do to this image. The only thing I could think to do is heighten a sense of drama out of it. Foreboding weather, one little boat against a big empty sea....that sort of thing. So that's what I set out to do, within limits. I did not modify the skies to be more threatening or anything wild. Just balances and curves.

I used Adobe Camera Raw from within Adobe Bridge CS5 to open the NEF image. This is what it looks like on import:

Just for grins, I clicked the "Auto" settings button to see what Adobe wanted to do with the image. Waaayyy heavy handed, but helpful in giving me a bump in the direction I wanted to go. I quickly toggled back to "As-Shot/Default" mode

Since I don't shoot with the same gear as Trevor, I allowed the program to do whatever Lens Corrections it thought it should.

Then I applied some non-destructive sharpening while still in RAW mode:

Then I experimented with camera profiles to see what the various modes would do to this fairly neutral image. I ended up liking what "portrait mode" did for no particular reason. It just seemed pleasing to me.

Then I played with the curves a bit (again, because I found this image to be fairly neutral and I was going for "foreboding")

Then I did a non-destructive crop in RAW mode:

Only then did I play with the basic level settings, and messed around a bit until I got something approaching the foreboding look I was going for:

Then I ported it into Photoshop CS5 and cloned stamped out the buoy's so that the sailboat was more on it's own. I then resized the image to 1280px wide, and then I applied a final bit of sharpening to make the waves seem a bit crisper and more ...wait for it..... foreboding

Final Image:

 

[Tucson T4R]

Here's my quick try. I have guests coming so I can't provide the details now but I will later if folks want to know. I also went for the foreboding look of the storm on the horizon but I liked the patch of blue sky in the upper right so I didn't crop.

Edit: More how I did it stuff. All Lightroom 3. First I rolled through the camera calibration options until I found one I liked. I settled for the landscape calibration. I then dropped the brightness from 50 down to 12 and increased the exposure by +32. The blues were too intense for me so I used the WB dropper and set the WB off the canvas sail. That warmed the WB up to 5500. It still had too much blue for me so I dropped the blue saturation down -35 and Blue luminance down -15.

To get the storm clouds the way I wanted them I used the graduated filter from the top down to the horizon to add clarity, contrast and lowered the brightness another -10. To bring up the foreground water and boat I used another graduated filter from the bottom up to the horizon to increase brightness by 10 and saturation by about 30.

Then I bumped the blacks up from 5 to 11 and adjusted the curves +24, -14, -14, 0

I used the spot removal tool set to clone to take out a few of the buoys in the distance.

I then dodged the sail boat to lighten it up a bit.

The last step was to add +20 of noise reduction.

Exported the image to a JPG with low sharpening for screen viewing.

 

[photoman]

This will be interesting to see develop.

I do not use LR anymore. Just straight to Adobe RAW and Photoshop.

 

[Clark White]

Here is my version:



Started off with unsharp mask at about 75%, then levels as they were a little bit out on both ends. I then increased the exposure and contrast and applied a warming 81 filter at 25% before using the burn tool at 50% to darken the large blown areas in the clouds. The last thing I did is went into the vibrance/saturation and turned the vibrance up all the way, but then turned the saturation way down. That last step has always seemed kind of a strange way to do it, but I'v found for some pictures it works well and I'm too PS illiterate to know a better way to do it.

Clark

P.S. Any idea why mine looks like such a low resolution copy? It has to be something I did as it doesn't look that way in the original...