Welcome Ed. About raw word flow. I wrote an "article" describing my work flow http://www.photosight.org/pforum/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=phototechnicality&N umber=322113&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=. So why not short version it to English? If you don't find it useful, somebody else might.
I'm not an expert, but this is my take on the task: For me the main trick is to work systematically, one image parameter at the time. If I fiddle with too much at the same time I simply get lost. This work flow is efficient when you are going for a high contrast presentation. If you are going for something else you need to set the parameters differently, but do it in the same order. 1. Sorting and tagging the images. I start sorting, simply because it saves me work. No point in spending converting time on photos I'm going to throw away anyway. In Lightroom you can also tag and rate the photos. Very useful IMO. 2. White balance. Most raw converters have an eye drop function. Find a white or neutral grey area of the image, and click there. Done. If that does not do the trick you simply have to fiddle around until you get what you want. My experience is that it often helps to set tint to neutral first. When the WB looks ok, then it is time to play with tint. Playing with both at the same time can be very confusing. 3. Exposure, aka setting white point. Exposure is eeeerh, exposure ;-) But it is also described as setting the white point, or setting upper clipping point. These two terms gives you a much better idea of what it is useful for. Keep an eye on the histogram while adjusting. You will see what it moves right when increasing exposure, left when decreasing. What you are looking for is the point where the histogram starts climbing at the right (when the whites starts clipping). When you want bright whites, back off just a tiny bit, if you want a medium key image, then back off a bit more. If you don't want details in highlights (high contrast), then don't back off, just leave it there. Most raw converters have a tool showing the clipping. With those I have tried you hold the Alt key, then the clipped areas is displayed. This is useful. After the clipping fields in the image are identified, I often do a fine tuning suiting my needs and my taste. At this stage, don't look if the image looks to dark or to light. You will adjust this later in the process. 4. Shadows, blacks, darks, aka setting lower clipping point. The procedure here is very similar to exposure. What you do here is setting lower clipping point. While adjusting shadows, the Alt key will display clipping in the lower. When the histogram starts climbing at left, stop. If you don't want details in the shadows (high contrast), just leave it there. But if you want to preserve details, you back off a bit here too. Now we are almost there. The rest is fine tuning. Very often I skip some of the next steps. 5. Brightness. At first sight the brightness controls the exposure. This is not true. Brightness has less effect on the extremes. Now it is time to decide if you want a medium key, a high key, or a low key result. I often leave brightness as it is. But it is useful to adjust the "overall look" of the photo. Moving right will make the photo look lighter, moving left will make it look darker. 6. Contrast. Contrast affects the impact off the photo. You have already done the basic contrast adjustments with exposure and shadows. But contrast control can be useful for fine tuning contrast. 7. Saturation. The adjustments you have done affect saturation. If you have increased contrast, you will experience increased saturation as a side effect. So, often you need to lower saturation in high contrast images. If you are Ken Rockwell, you like strong colours. Then you may have an urge to pump them even higher. By all means, do it. It will become a crappy image, but it is your decision ;-) This is the basic steps. In a basic raw converter there is not much else to do. Except doing the actual conversion off course ;-) One important thing to have in mind: Every adjustment affects the noise (especially in shadows area). Don't worry too much about it, but it is a good idea to have an eye on noise while adjusting. You will also experience that most adjustments are compromises. There is no such thing as the perfect setting for a parameter. ----------------------------------------------------- In more sophisticated converters you have several other tools available. - Recovery is for fine tuning highlights. If I use it, I usually do it after basic exposure tuning. - Fill light is one example, very useful in some situation, but don't overdo it. To much fill destroys colours. I often grab it if I'm not satisfied after step 7. - Serious converters also have curves adjustment. IMO it is much better doing it non destructive, before converting. - Often you can do sharpening and de-noise too. This can be useful for web sized presentations, but not in serious presentations. Many prefer doing sharpening as last step in workflow, because further editing after sharpening often gives pixilation and other bad side effects. - Cropping before can be neat too. No point in saving huge large files if you don't need them. Ok. This is my two cents on raw converting. Other listers will probably disagree in some parts, or the whole lot. Some may even call me names. But I can take it. Let us talk raw ;-) Tim Mostly harmless (just plain Norwegian) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Keeney Sent: 6. januar 2007 15:39 To: pdml Subject: Introduction Hello... <snip> I'm shooting mostly in *** JPG but have attempted some RAW processing. I'm still working the kinks out on what RAW gives me as well as how I am supposed to post process. I am using PS Elements 5 with the RAW plug-in for the K100D. Any help on work flow would be appreciated. <snip> -- Thanks! Ed http://picasaweb.google.com/ewkphoto -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
