The Big Photo Edit Geek Post

On par with my track record over the past while, my blog posts about photography have been a little too infrequent.  Here I’d like to take the opportunity to talk about a couple things that I’ve found interesting over the past few weeks. I’ll preface my comments below by saying that I’ll be referencing Adobe Lightroom, but the same applies when using the RAW module and Photoshop.  As well, I’ll also say that my comments stem from some long hours editing wedding and baby photos coupled with some really good comments and discussions from other photographers on their blogs.

Use Your Imagination and get a grip on RAW!

I shoot RAW and convert to DNG from Canon’s CR2 format as part of my default workflow practice, and have talked about it in previous journal postings.  I love it and really only consider shooting JPG in those situations that truly require maximum continuous shutter performance (example being motorsports).  I find that the buffer and burst rate on my Canon 50D with RAW is really good and I rarely find myself wishing for more buffer room.  But I digress…

The point about this section is to mainly reinforce that your RAW photo is simply all the uncompressed photo data that your camera recorded when you pushed the shutter and that preview that you are seeing on your screen is just a jpg preview of that data.  It is what you can do with that data later on that is important.  It is on that note that I encourage you to use your imagination.  Everyone has a different workflow process when they review their photos.  Personally, I use a pass/fail type of mindset, and typically review sets of photos several time while pairing them down.  Please refer to this post I did for more info about the power of the “X” key.  It is important to kick start your imagination while you are reviewing your photos.  If you see something that grabs you, stop and edit.  Don’t let the moment of inspiration escape you.  Let this drive your creativity, and it will help you as you continue to sort out the keepers and the floaters from the hundreds or thousands of shots from your last shoot.  

Remember you shot RAW because it is uncompressed and gives you power.  If your shot looks “bland” at first glance, it’s probably due to the “best guess” formula that is being shown to you as a preview.  I recommend taking notes or remembering specific details about the light or environment when you took the shot.  This will help you later on when you are looking at the “bland” image thinking that you were sure that the clouds were more contrasty and epic looking.  The flip side to this is that you, the photographer, should be looking at the scene trying to capture that very thing that you found interesting.  Sometimes that “blandness” is simply your fault, and I will be the first to admit that I have shot a lot of “bland” photos.  

One of the reasons why I enjoy shooting weddings so much is that the entire day is an adrenalin rush.  There is nothing “bland” about the day and the constant challenge of capturing once-in-a-lifetime moments forces me to step up my abilities.

Good Places to Use Clarity

I won’t get into the differences between utilizing clarity and sharpness here as they both function differently.  What I did want to pass along are some really great uses for clarity that I’ve found during my last rounds of editing.  Painting clarity in with the adjustment brush is one of the best ways to use clarity effectively.  I’ve found that adding it in selectively helps to create an image that shows the captured detail and draws your eye to that detail without being really over the top.  Places where I used this technique rather frequently in the last wedding proofs that I was working on were hair, bouquet and clothing detail.  I was amazed what a difference utilizing clarity on the folds of a wedding dress or dress shirt can make.  As well, when added to the bouquet and hair, the detail pops without it becoming “over-sharpened.”  Give this a try, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Going over the top with clarity can also be a good thing and can be really useful when drawing detail out of contrasty clouds and grass.  The beauty of using the adjustment brush is that you can do a little painting, start a new brush and paint over the area that you just worked on to increase the effect.  The fact that you can effectively layer your brush adjustments has been one of my favorite things while using Lightroom.

Don’t Forget the Histogram

Here’s the thing about me and the histogram, whether it be on the camera or when in Lightroom/Photoshop:  I don’t live and die by it!  

I know that there may be a collective scream of agony from some groups when they read or hear that but it is the truth.  I would prefer to say that the histogram is:  A great reference tool that you should use to your advantage.  Don’t forget about it!  You don’t need to live and die by it, but it is the one thing that can keep you grounded when either shooting a photo or editing that photo later on.  As an experienced photographer I have a pretty good idea what the histogram is going to look like when I take a photo of Baba in front of a bay window with no flash at a baby shower.  That being said, it may be good to check the histogram vs the photo to ensure that enough detail of Baba made it into the image compared to the blown out background, and with that, voila, Baba now looks like the glowing angel that she really is.

When editing, the histogram is something that I do keep an eye on, still as a reference.  I find that it is really good to know where you are at when adjusting your brightness, contrast, curves/levels etc.  Even if you are doing a washed out effect on an image, it is good  to watch that you don’t end up clipping more of the image than you really intend too.  This also applies to clipping the black levels in the photo.  I’ve found it useful to apply presets to photos and go through and see what settings have been changed, and how they affect the histogram.  I have found that this has helped me to know what to expect the histogram to look like when I edit, and learning to keep an eye on it, has helped me to keep my edits in check.

Conclusion

Well that’s pretty much all for now.  I’m always curious to hear your comments on my posts, so don’t be shy in commenting or sending me a message.  Have you tried the techniques above?  Do you like them?  What are your favorites?  

As always there is more to come.

When Things Come Together

Click to EnlargeLook at this photo.  Take your time and note some of the things that you like and dislike about it.  Is there anything that really stands out to you?  Does it make you think or feel anything?  Does it tell a story?

To me there are several things that stand out.  There is a story, and yes it does make me think and feel about some very specific things.  Is it a success?  To me the answer is yes, now that I’ve seen the image transform from where it started to the final product.  Perhaps when you see the photo transform you too will have a different appreciation.

Here is the base original photo.  It was shot at 1/800, f5.6, ISO 100, 300mm, Click to Enlargeand what you see here is the file as it looked after being converted to DNG with the standard preview.  Looks kind of blah, and that’s what I was thinking when I started to work with it.  To be honest I started playing around with it to test out Lightroom 3, but that changed when I realized that I also hadn’t really tested some of the updated onOne plugin’s that I use.  They are fantastic and utilize the power of Photoshop (CS5 in my case) to perform operations that while doable, may take a lot more time to perform manually.

Just to get it out of the way, let me just say that I am incredibly impressed when things come together.  The experience of starting an edit in Lightroom performing advanced processing in Photoshop and then bringing that edited file back into Lightroom to finish it off is fantastic.  Now with the combination of Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5, that process is that much better.  Throw in the ability to run everything in 64bit, and I’d say it is exactly what I’ve been waiting for since Lightroom 1 and Photoshop CS3.

Click to EnlargeHere is the photo cropped to create a composition that I thought suited the image.  Over the past little while, I have been checking out a variety of photographers that utilize negative space in their images exceptionally well.  This is definitely something that I feel that I need work on.  This may sound odd, but getting used to not having things in a composition can be both rather disconcerting and liberating at the same time.

In this next photo, I did some preliminary corrective work. This included adjusting the exposure, blacks, clarity and contrast.  I also performed a very slight “S” curve adjustment, followed by some very slight Saturation/Luminance adjustments to affect the blues and red tones.  In this photo, (and most photos in general) utilizing a “S” curve or some curve variant, tends to act as a good starting point when dealing with colour, versus going directly to Hue, Saturation or Luminance.  When I do use H/S/L, I try to keep those changes to be as subtle as possible.  If you do not use curves now in either Lightroom or Photoshop, I would really encourage you to try them.  The will change your workflow and approach to editing.  

Remember, one of the greatest things about using Lightroom is that it is a non-destructive environment, and you can simply “reset” your image if you don’t like the way it looks.  Go ahead and play, the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll learn something, and that something will probably be really cool!

Click to EnlargeDo you recognize this photo?  I bet it looks very similar to the one that you saw at the top of this Journal entry.  So what has gone on here?  Well, it was edited using onOne’s Focal Point 2 plug in.  This helped to control where the focus of the shot was and helped to control the out of focus areas.  After this had been applied, the photo was brought back into Lightroom 3, and received another round of slight tweaking using some of the same methods listed above.  

Finally, to finish things off, I touched up the sharpening slightly using onOne’s Genuine Fractals Professional 6 plug in.  After applying that small change the photo returned to Lightroom and was then considered done.

To wrap up this meandering post, I really like when all of the tools that I have at my disposal come together seamlessly.  Even in working on this photo, you could feel the amount of research and development that both Adobe and onOne has put into their current products.  In total, I spent about twenty minutes working on this image trying different things.  By the time I was done, I just wanted to start on another one, and to be honest, that’s probably what I’d still be doing if it weren’t for wanting to write this journal entry!

Thanks for reading. ~ Jared

Freedom by using a "X"

Before I get started on my journal entry, I’d like to wish all of the dad’s out there a very Happy Father’s Day!  I hope you have a great day!  :-)

Photographic workflow is a topic that I find really interesting.  It is something that I’ve commented on from time to time here on my journal, and I’m always curious to see what other people are doing with their workflow.  Most of the my focus here has been on the electronic side of the spectrum; what do you do with all those files that you’ve generated on your camera?  Sadly (?) I actually enjoy asking that question, and I believe that plays a big part in being an efficient, effective photographer.  As i work mostly between Lightroom and Photoshop for my cataloging and editing, I will not be able to comment on other products like Aperture or Bibble, but I believe that the main focus can be applied to those programs as well.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been once again auditing my own workflow.  Specifically, I’ve been making a more concerted effort to become more organized inside of Lightroom, with the focus being to make it easier to find what I’m looking for, and to streamline my content.  To help me on my quest, I have been reworking and deploying my keywords lists/sets, (smart) collections, and labels/ranking.  

Well working on this, I came across a very obvious truth which I had been avoiding to acknowledge:   I have a lot of “crap” photos.  By “crap” photos I mean unnecessary duplicates, photos that should be ranked under 3 out of 5 stars, and would never serve any other purpose than to take up space on my hard drive.  This is when I discovered the “X” key.  “X” in Lightroom is the keyboard shortcut for flagging a photo as being rejected.  As I started to parse my photos, I found my self X’ing groups of photos at a time.  The more I did it and by the time I was done I had flagged approximately 900 photos as rejected.  At the end of the session I selected the “Delete Rejected Photos” command and after giving them a once over, deleted them from both my Lightroom catalogue and my computer’s hard drive.

Boy did that feel good, and to think that was only from vacation last October and Christmas of 2009.  Since then it has become easier to X photos, and I have gotten into the habit of performing this function during the first review after importing a new batch of photos.  One of the benefits to shooting digital is that it allows me the freedom of taking as many photos as I want.  But it is the control of all that content that becomes critical after you’ve taken it.  

I encourage you to audit your photo catalogue and to make a habit of purging the “crap” content.  By utilizing tools like keywords, star ratings, and collections, you will very quickly be able to start organizing your content.  It will make you feel better, I guarantee it!  

Muttart Conservatory

Today was a good day for me, as for the first day in almost three weeks I didn’t have any medical appointments.  My main task was to follow the doctor’s orders and continue to rest leading back into my regular medicine which starts tomorrow.  I tried to take full advantage of this and had a relaxing morning of exploring the full version of Lightroom 3. This afternoon, Charlotte and I explored the Muttart Conservatory  here in Edmonton.  

This evening, I spent some more quality time reviewing and editing today’s photos in Lightroom 3.  So far I am very happy, Adobe has done a fantastic job and has even slipped a couple of extra features into the full version compared to the beta.  I would encourage you to at least download the trial copy of Lightroom 3 and to try it out.   I will try to come up with a more specific journal entry in the near future concerning Lightroom 3, but for right now, I’ll just say that it is fantastic value for the money.

Here are a few photos that I was working on this evening; I hope you enjoy them.

Gaia

A Couple Items

Good evening…

I wanted to drop in and share a couple of items with you.  The first is that Lightroom 3 has been officially released and is available currently from Adobe.  The second is that the first photowalk hosted by Vivid Light Studios took place this last weekend, with submissions coming from Australia, Canada and the USA.  Thanks to all who participated.