Post process in photoshop

Huujuu

Huujuu

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601
Name
Ian
Edit My Images
Yes
OK (hangs head in defeat, i can see petemc's smirk from here!) I'm tying myself in knots. 3 weeks into this photography lark and i thought i was making good headway, look at me with my HDR and so on! Ive gone from taking snaps for a portfolio to making HDR images of just about every photo i take, ive got Photomatix and its great but ive just started using photoshop for more than just cropping and resizing. Colour balance, hue/saturation and don't talk to me about the unsharp filter. Once i realised just how much you can do i started throwing everything at every image, which is wonderful, but i dont actually know what i'm doing. What do they say, a little knowledge?

So the question is, what is a sensible way to approach the images fresh off the camera? I'm taking photos in RAW (or 3 jpgs, but this isnt one of my HDR rants so pretend it's just RAW). At the moment everything is fiddled with and it's getting to the point where i dont know if i'm making an improvement. Ive noticed this the more i comment on other peoples work as it seems easier to see what others are doing than it is to see my own work. It's a bit like when you say a word over and over and eventually it starts to sounds 'wrong'.

So what are the basic routines? is there a check list that would help? I understand that the main thing i need is experience and eventually i will know what needs tweaking, but, for example, just about every photo i take seems to benefit from a bit of unsharp mask and today i purposefully undid a few images back to their original state and some of them i prefer, i think, and i dont know why. They look a little blurred......but they didnt until after i'd sharpened it, and then undone the sharpening. There seems to be such a fine line between authentic images and artistic ones. I like both.

Thats a fair old rant and i'm prob not explaining myself well, but can anyone tell me their rough take on sharpening, colour and contrast adjustments and when to 'step away from the software'. Thanks:bonk:

ian

Yes, i will buy some books and keep experimenting but in the mean time a little 'don't touch the hue/saturation because...........would be most helpful.
 
This is a hard one ! because i ask myself am i trying to please me or my critics, or the judges who come every month and either tear my print apart or praise it to high heaven. IMHO i look at my raw file,get rid of the over exposed bits (theres always some in mine) and bang it into CS3.If i like the result i don't touch it, yes i do know it's hard not to use USM or HUE & SATURATION and then i use the ultimate weapon ASK THE WIFE !! have another glass of red and either smirk or fume at the result.
 
what is a sensible way to approach the images fresh off the camera
Click to expand...

I'm no expert but I view them all in ACDSee and delete any that are out of focus or I don't like. I review those left and pull the "best" into PhotoShop.

Depending on the image/ subject I might:

- add adjustment layers for curves and levels
- crop
- add a 200px feathered adjustment layer for levels (a vignette)
- Alien Skin it
- USM in Lab Mode

or a bunch of other things. Sometimes I play with Image Adjust > shadow/ highlight on a duplicate layer. And then there is playing with selective colours.

The list is endless but the key (IMO) is to take the best in-camera image (photo) that you can. If you don't like the finished image just delete it and start again. It gets quicker each time :)

For a look at what is possible have a look at http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/
 
there are sadly no hard and fast rules, though certainly almost every image shot in raw will require some sharpening.

However, may I make a suggestion that I found very useful when I first starting processing seriously....walk away! Literally, if you cant or dont know when to stop, leave it, go back to it later and look again and re-evaluate what you have done. I often found I had overdone it. You can only learn 'smart' processing with practice and even the most experienced will tell you they sometimes make a complete pigs ear of it. Of course, it also helps to know before you even start what you want to achieve with the image, in fact this often happens at time of shooting and thats what you should aim for, nothing more.

Sorry, not the 'menu' you wanted, but hopefully helpful in some small way ;)
 
I would also suggest that when you start on a photo, you should already have a good idea what you want it to look like when you are done...and then refer back to that image as you proces the real one. This will help keep you on track.
 
POSTIE22 said:
i look at my raw file,get rid of the over exposed bits (theres always some in mine) and bang it into CS3.
Click to expand...

Do you do this in the camera before you you load it into cs3 or just view it on the monitor and if so how do you get rid of overexposed bit first? Yes, red wine does help, it motivated this thread!

mhuk said:
.

Depending on the image/ subject I might:

- add adjustment layers for curves and levels
- crop
- add a 200px feathered adjustment layer for levels (a vignette)
- Alien Skin it
- USM in Lab Mode

or a bunch of other things. Sometimes I play with Image Adjust > shadow/ highlight on a duplicate layer. And then there is playing with selective colours.

The list is endless
Click to expand...

Thanks, that's really cheered me up, now i've got even more things that i know i dont know!:)

Yv said:
there are sadly no hard and fast rules, though certainly almost every image shot in raw will require some sharpening.

However, may I make a suggestion that I found very useful when I first starting processing seriously....walk away! Literally, if you cant or dont know when to stop, leave it, go back to it later and look again and re-evaluate what you have done. I often found I had overdone it. You can only learn 'smart' processing with practice and even the most experienced will tell you they sometimes make a complete pigs ear of it. Of course, it also helps to know before you even start what you want to achieve with the image, in fact this often happens at time of shooting and thats what you should aim for, nothing more.

Sorry, not the 'menu' you wanted, but hopefully helpful in some small way ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks, that makes me feel less like a novice. Ive usually got a rough idea of what i want before hand but often i'll tweak a bit, spot something i hadnt thought about and loose myself in the details. Walking away is good advice, yesterday i was so totally lost in it all, i was seeing images when i fell asleep.

I'm glad you say a lot of images need sharpening,that was really concerning me and i'm loathed to blame it on my equipment. Also, when i use unsharp filter, i have the image of preview so i can see the effect but when i press 'ok' the amount of sharpening i could see on my image falls back a bit so i have to oversharpen to get the effect i can actually monitor! Whats going on here then?

hunter20ga said:
I would also suggest that when you start on a photo, you should already have a good idea what you want it to look like when you are done...and then refer back to that image as you proces the real one. This will help keep you on track.
Click to expand...

I have started doing that now and it does help, it's just that occasional 'can't tell which one is better' that gets me.

Much appreciated chaps, thanks for holding my hand!:)
 
Hello again. When i bought my camera i was advised by a mate of mine to get onto the Nikon website and download the latest Raw File Converter. I did this, followed the instructions and put it into PS. When i open a raw file it opens in this Raw File Converter and one of the Quick fix sliders is for correcting the over exposure, this button is called RECOVERY, it highlights your over exposed bits and you slide it to the right until they are all gone. Theres also a load of other sliders as well i'm afraid, but it's up to you if you want to use them for any effects you might want to add to your image.
 
That makes good sense, thanks. I suppose one of the main issues is processing without loosing information and if i can access the RAW data before it is changed too much i may be able to make some of the minor adjustments. If i load a RAW file into cs3 i get a totally different set of controls, is this anything like the RAW converter you are talking about? Heading over to the Nikon site now for a look.
 
Yeah, make sure you download the latest version for your camera, and rest assured your RAW file is unchanged in any way providing that after the changes you do make at this stage, you save it as a COPY (alt+enter) before going into PS. I save both the original(unchanged) file and the TIFF file at 8bits when finished. Give them both the same file name(different extensions eg:TIFF,JPEG etc etc) and save them in the same folder you've created, and you can see the differences you've made !
 
Could only find rather expensive downloads on the Nikon site, my version of cs3 does bring up a plugin called Camera RAW which appears to do what you are talking about. Any idea if it does?
 
Thankyou very much, have silkypix that came with panasonic, when i find disc! Will look in STICKY in mean time. (and pay more attention to what threads there are!)

cheers.
 
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