Digital photo processing

[Bill_Anderson]

I have friends who shoot in RAW and then process with Photoshop. I am not proficient with computers and would rather be out shooting, so I shoot in jpeg and do minimal processing (primarily cropping) with Picasa.

Although I have seen beautiful photos produced with the use of Photoshop and similar programs, I have also seen many nature and landscape photos processed so much that while good looking, they don't resemble real life.

What kind of digital processing do you do to your photos?

[SpeedRacer]

I use Adobe CS3, basically started out with the basic Adobe Photshop then upgraded.....I've thought about upgrading to a newer version, but for what I do 3 has plenty of tips and tricks. I did purchase an Adobe CS3 training DVD pack off eBay and that really helped.

[Gomes]

I do global edits in Adobe Camera Raw, which is a program inside Adobe Bridge. Then take photos into Photoshop for local editing. I shoot in RAW, everyone should really. If you shoot in jpeg and save over your original files you can never recover them. As opposed to RAW where you can make as many edits and never corrupt the original file.

[DUCeditor]

My work for many years was photo-manipulation for scientific publication and presentation. Thus I was early on the Photoshop bandwagon and using it is second nature to me. I have the newest versions on my office workstations but have stayed with older verson on my home computers to keep that second-nature quality.

There is nothing that PS cannot do. But as in everything judgement is key. you can ruin and image or improve it. And which is which is open to opinion.

Shooting and saving in RAW makes sense. Shooting and saving in both RAW and JPEG makes even more if one's camera has that auto function. But frankly I'd challenge most photographers to identify which is which if a high level JPEG is used.

A key question is whether one allows their camera to auto manipulate for portrait, scenery, etc. If so than one has thrown away the base settings if one only saves that JPEG. I for the most part use none of those "easy" settings, but save the true image, otherwise unmanipulated, in JPEG. If I am doing serious work (and I generally know the difference) I will save in RAW. Daily shooting? No. For the sake of memory usage.

-don

[scott]

With all the power of Lightroom or Aperture you seldom need to even wander into Photoshop if you use one of these programs for your downloading and standard editing needs. I would suggest downloading one of them for free to try. Lightroom is for PC or Mac, Aperture is Mac only. In my case, we shot 400 underwater photos in Grand Cayman in RAW and I was able to edit everything beautifully in just a couple of hours. Any edits you make in either of these programs is non-destructive meaning you still have the original intact photo, just micro files that say you have made these changes and to show the display .jpg with those changes.

[SS904]

I have CS3 and do some of my work in there. I do shoot RAW. I do this primarily to be able to adjust WB when dealing with cycling gym lighting, and to speed up work flow believe it or not. You can really make some pretty big changes to a RAW file that you couldn’t get away with after the fact, in JPG. I do my very best to get everything right in the camera so there is minimum work in post. Using the RAW converter that came with your camera, DPP, is nice as it presents the image to be processed as it would look if it were shot in JPG (and it's free). All your camera settings apply. You just need to make minor tweaks from there. The newest version of DPP is very good. It allows you to do a quick check of your shots. You can add a check-mark to the images as you go. After review, you can call up the images you check-marked and process those either globally or one at a time. You then just do a batch convert and you’re pretty much done. My workflow for large numbers of sports images is a lot faster since I started doing it that way. Honestly, if not for needing to do some noise reduction for 3200 and 6400 ISO shots, I'd be finished after DPP. I have a plug in on CS3 for high ISO NR, so I still go there.

I mentioned the cycling gym light thing… If you’ve never experienced that fun, it is a cyclic shift of color temp at a 60Hz rate. There is NO WB setting in the camera that will help you if you’re shooting a burst. Worse, if you have light from two separate lamps in the same frame, you’re really screwed!

Here’s an example of what I mean. You can see the pink to blue color shift across the frame from two separate lamps. I just did the best I could to get WB correct for the gymnast. This would be hard to impossible to recover from if the image was shot in JPG.

[04749s]

another +1 for Lightroom, handles at least 90% of my needs then i also have CS4 and a few others.
In Light Room 3
Simple B&W conversion, go through the levels real fast and crop.

[IN2VWS]

I have just become a fan of RAW images. Previously, I exclusively shot in jpg format.
I bought a new camera on the weekend, and a Gary Fong powersnoot today. While getting the hang of the powersnoot, I decided to shoot in RAW format. I had the camera in M mode, and many of the pics were over and under exposed.
I downloaded the free trial of Aperture,.......all I can say is wow. I wish I had done this years ago.

I agree with the previous comment, that you can over correct a pic to the point that it looks fake.

I have now set my point'n'shoot to shoot RAW also.

John

[scott]

Originally Posted by IN2VWS

I have just become a fan of RAW images. Previously, I exclusively shot in jpg format.
I bought a new camera on the weekend, and a Gary Fong powersnoot today. While getting the hang of the powersnoot, I decided to shoot in RAW format. I had the camera in M mode, and many of the pics were over and under exposed.
I downloaded the free trial of Aperture,.......all I can say is wow. I wish I had done this years ago.

I agree with the previous comment, that you can over correct a pic to the point that it looks fake.

I have now set my point'n'shoot to shoot RAW also.

John

So cool that you are trying out Aperture! I bet you will find that you can do everything faster and will seldom if ever have to leave the program. HAVE FUN!

[gragravar]

like the OP, most of my shots are in jpg and I do very little processing of them. It is something I should learn to do more of. Historically, time has been my big constraint keeping my edits to a minimum.