Digital image developing: am I doing it right?

[will_frost]

<p>Hi all,<br>

I'm going to put my noobie hat on, and ask you if you think I'm doing it right.</p>

<p>Here's what I do when I take a digital image from camera to print:<br>

1. Visualize<br>

2. Expose to the right for the lightest tone I want to print. Bracket if I need more shadow detail.<br>

3. Recover highlight detail with the Recovery slider in ACR<br>

Hopefully I have a flat 'negative' at this point.<br>

4. Duplicate the image into another layer and bring up the shadows in that layer.<br>

5. Mask off areas for noise reduction. Heavy on the chroma noise reduction, light on the luminance noise reduction. Do as little as possible.<br>

6. Fiddle with curves to place my lightest, darkest, and mid-tones where I want them. Blend layers.<br>

7. Save (!)<br>

8. Size for output<br>

9. Sharpen for output. (This is adding acutance in film terms, yes?)<br>

Obviously I'm missing some things here. (RGB vs LAB, color casts, B&W conversions, etc.) But, do I have the basic outline right?<br>

Thanks everybody,<br>

Will</p>

 

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Pretty much have it right, but if you're shooting and processing in Raw then the majority of shadow detail, noise reduction, clarity, sharpening, tonal and color adjustments including curves can be done in ACR with all edits saved to one .xmp file, very convenient and easy to keep track of.</p>

<p>If possible always try to fix highlight detail with curves and/or adjusting to the left the Exposure slider to get the best definition out of highlight detail. Highlight Recovery works in extreme cases where the histogram highlights are spiked to the right. Work in ProPhotoRGB and 16 bit output space in ACR especially if you have a display with a wide color gamut.</p>

<p>Forget the ETTR stuff. It's not worth the risk of losing highlight detail which can be ruined even when one channel blows out. You won't see it in your camera LCD or histogram. I often have to clone out small grotesquely yellow patches out of sunlit tree bark because I blew the red channel due to the color temp being either too warm or too red which is often the case shooting AWB or any incamera WB. The filters in your lenses and sensor will add to this uncontrollable aspect of ETTR.</p>

[will_frost]

<p>Thanks Tim. ACR doesn't allow for layers yet, does it? I'm used to applying different amounts of noise reduction and curve lifting in different spots with a combination of layers and masks. Time to take a closer look at the manual. (Especially the part about Exposure vs. Highlight Recovery.)<br>

I hear you on the ETTR stuff. I'm mostly thinking of some snaps I took on a day with really flat light - for some reason the in-camera metering plopped the entire histogram in the middle. Loads and loads of room to the right. I'm going to take a second look at Carl Weese's <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/12/on-testing-new-digital-camera-steps.html">paper towel test</a> and see if it still makes sense with what I'm doing.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

 

<blockquote>

<p>Loads and loads of room to the right.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>See the image I posted of a fire truck shot at night in this thread and all the loads and loads of data captured to the left in the histogram and the image still had plenty of data to show no posterization anywhere when lightened.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/casual-conversations-forum/00YksD</p>

 

 

[will_frost]

<p>Thanks, Tim, that's helpful.</p>

[mariosforsos]

<p>While ACR does not allow for layers or masks, LR (and Aperture) do - in their way. Masks that is, not layers...;-)</p>

<p>There is the possiblity of applying specific effects (ranging from recovery, to brightness, to shadows, to noise reduction to sharpening, etc to specific areas of the image, directly on your original RAW image. While they do not provide the flexibility of PS and its layers and localised curves, they are a superb way of accomplishing 70% of your development in a file that provides infinite more latitude that ANY TIFF or JPEG file...;-)</p>

[will_frost]

<p>Thanks Marios,<br>

I had stopped paying attention to what LR and Aperture did a while ago. Maybe it's time to read product reviews again. :)</p>