Not sure if this is really 1?? More of asking for your way.... Post processing

Hi all, will try and keep this short but hard to explain what I'm asking for.....

just got a new computer so going through the woes with that when I was already struggling with post processing, photography, and health issues.

i come from a photography background, parents had a fine art pre press business. Now dad is a pro photographer mainly doing film.

my problem comes in that we have tons of pro friends who can teach me, but have known me since I was a kid, so they seem to kind of forget that I don't know all the technical ways even though I mostly know what is being spoken of.

kind of like learning a language, as a kid you just pick it up, as an adult you have to learn a new language.

my growing up language was 4 color separations, scanners, film, loud equipment, and a lot of loud cranky picky spectacular artists.

i spent 5 hours on Sunday with a dear friend who has known me since I was born, who now teaches Lightroom and has always worked for one of the best architectural photographers.

i needed help with some images due for a contest and was without my computer or Lightroom.

she was great help, the problem is that with her, just like my dad, they forget to tell me the "how" they are doing what they are doing.

so I came home and loaded Lightroom and spent 6 hours figuring out... How to only import one folder of photos, not my whole drive.... Because the how to was left out.

books, I have many, they are my go to source.

but here is sort of my question on workflow......

i see people here and everywhere really that put down their photo info, example.....

taken into LR, PS done etc etc, taken through Topaz clarity 5 then Silver Efex, then applied so and so filter.

seriously I have to think and go find my simplest photo exif info.

so how do you keep track of this??

more importantly..... When you have LR and or PS or others how do you decide what to use, or even remember what you have??

i downloaded a trial of NIK and Topaz and there are so many things it really is like learning every word in a new language.

i have never even figured out everything I could do in Corel paintshop pro (old comp)..... My fathers version of answers is.... " just use what you need and forget about the rest"

and for adding things like Topaz..... He just says why, PS has what I need.

looking at Topaz, NIK, AlienSkin..... I would love to be able to utilize them in LR since I can't do the full PS, though I got elements added to the new computer as a deal.

but HOW do you utilize all these things and remember what you have and what everything does??

hope what I'm asking makes sense. Maybe my question is easier put into.... What is your post processing digital workflow language, or your ritual on each photo??

thanks to any who take the time to read and answer this.

Sounds like you might be making things more complicated than post processing really needs to be.

I don't use Lightroom. All I use are three programs: Breezebrowser (organizing), Canon's Digital
Photo Professional (Raw) and Photoshop.

My steps are simple...in the RAW file I simply adjust the exposure/highlights, etc. and save it as a tif
file (using Canon's Digital Photo Professional). Then in photoshop I just adjust the background and
bird on their own layers (curves adjustment, removing a twig, noise reductionetc.). Finally I just
sharpen the image on its own layer.

"Normally" my layers look like: background, copy of background, bird only, sharpen (bird only). That's it.
Everything is named so I know what I did to it.

I think I spend around 10 minutes per photo. Don't use NIK cause I don't need it. The only 3rd party filter
I have is Topaz' noise reduction filter.

The more I get right in the camera, the less I have to do outside (post processing).

So when it comes time to remembering what I did to a photo, its pretty easy. As far as the actual
EXIF data, I just use Breezebrowser where I can simply copy and paste the info into a thread, or
wherever.

I actually spend more time in Breezebrowser as I go thru all my new shots and try to decide what are
stinkers and what are keepers.

In the end, just look at your photo and you decide exactly what it needs...no more no less. If it needs
a certain filter, then use it. But don't use it just because 'everybody' else is using it. Eventually, the more
post you do, you'll discover your own style on what works and doesn't work.

Hope that makes some sense :)

Doug

In PS I always work in layers. I often do more than Doug does, with adjustment layers and pixel layers (Nik, Topaz, etc.) Nik will make its own layer and you can click on the layer name in the Layers panel and re-name it so you know what it is -- developing a shorthand is very nice. For Topaz, I'll make a copy on the layer, or a composite of all layers below, as needed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E) then let Topaz work on that one. Adjustment layers are mostly self-explanatory -- you click on them to see what the adjustment was and you can see the mask overlaid on the image with the backslash key.

This doesn't let me see everything I did but it comes close.

In LR's Metadata panel there is a place for comments, and you can also rename the PS file right there. Sometimes I'll do a Save As in PS if I'm going in a different direction with an image, or open it as a copy from LR, so I have preserved the file I started with.

It's a journey, but well worth it!

Best of luck!

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more importantly..... When you have LR and or PS or others how do you decide what to use, or even remember what you have??

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This is not an easy question to answer because it really depends on what your artistic vision is for the image you could give 5 different photographers the same image and after post you will get 5 different versions of the same image. This is what I think is so great about digital the complete control over your vision.

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i have never even figured out everything I could do in Corel paintshop pro (old comp)..... My fathers version of answers is.... " just use what you need and forget about the rest

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He is correct learn what you need to know now and you will pick up the rest as you grow, I've been using PS for close to ten years and I still learn new methods and tools all the time as your proficiency grows and you find your vision you will pick up the things you need. Post processing is an art form in its self and cannot be learned over night you need to practice and study and work on your images and your skills will grow. I can think of any number of members on BPN who were talented photographers but lacked the processing skills when they joined to really show their work at it best but with practice and time and the critiques of other members have taken their images to another level.

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What is your post processing digital workflow language, or your ritual on each photo??

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My work flow is dependent on PS and layers and to be honest I really have never worked in LR on average I spend about 30 minutes on an image longer for landscape images as they usually require more work.
In ACR I do the following adjustments if needed in the following order
Choose which camera profile I will use base on the image
Lens correction
color temp adjustment if needed
Exposure adjustment if needed
Highlights and white adjustments if needed
Black point and shadow adjustments if needed
Clarity usually +20
Vibrance Usually +20
Saturation rarely nedded
Capture sharpening I usually use the default setting but always use the masking slider to only apply sharpening to the subject never the BG
Export to PS as a PSD
In PS I will do I loose initial crop if needed then move on to my localize adjustments which I do with layers an average image will have 4 to 8 layers once I have the image the way I want it I save as a PSD file with all layers active. Once saved I will do a finale crop and down size for the web its at this stage that I will apply any NR if needed again using a layer and only on the BG and finish the image with sharpening on another layer and also only on the subject at no stage do I globally sharpen my images. Now I am ready to save for the web as a Jpeg. Now if you're using a Lightroom only workflow use the brushes to apply NR and sharpening locally at the end of your workflow along with your adjustments if needed I would also save a none cropped master file as a Tiff or PSD file

WOW well you all know how to answer questions and give me things to think on.

Don.... What is ACR??

ACR stands for Adobe Camera Raw and it is Adobes RAW converter and while technically a stand alone program is integrated into both PS and LR so that part of my workflow is relevant to you and in my opinion most people do not use it to its full potential.

Hi Linz.

Excellent advice given above, agree with all of it. My interpretation of your problem is that you have too many choices at your feet and feel a bit overwhelmed by it. So my suggestion to counter that is to forget about most of it, start simple, learn how to use one program first so you can focus on learning that and grow from there. I would start with either Breeze browser or Photo mechanic as the importer/viewer software and PS as the processing package. Nothing else. No addin's or filters etc, all that can come later.. I suggest PS over LR as I think PS can do all of what LR can do and more... I would also bypass DDP for the initial stages as I think ACR (part of PS) is easier to use first up and the latest versions (I use CS6) are pretty good. DDP is the better for high ISO noise but that's it in my opinion.. Both ACR and DDP are used for RAW image conversion. Have fun..

DON

thanks some more!!!

I looked at breeze browser and photo mechanic but they are both over $100 so not doable right now, have to pay off the new computer first.

LR will do everything you need right now here is a good tutorial on LR it is for LR 3 but it will give you the foundation you need and since its for LR 3 they are selling it at 50% off. I would also recommend checking out the whole sight I learned a lot from Luminance Landscape.

Linz- There are many ways to do this and it seems from your post that you are scanning the horizon, which is very wide. I would recommend settling down and going slowly and you will find something that works for you. I would not recommend thinking about Photoshop plugins until you get Photoshop going and get used to it. If you don't want to lay out an amount of $$ for software, Adobe has a deal right now where they are offering Photoshop and Lightroom for $9.99/month. Adobe calls it the Photoshop Photography Program.

I use Lightroom and Photoshop with Photo Mechanic making an appearance early on in the workflow- but ignore this last bit because I have special needs in keywording my wildlife (mainly bird) photographs and Photo Mechanic can do things Lightroom can't in this regard. Having said this, Lightroom is an incredibly powerful database program for managing your ever-growing image collection including the critically important function of finding your images amongst 1000s. It is also a very powerful raw processor and post processor. As I learn more and more about Lightroom I am using Photoshop less and less, but it's still there when I need it.

So, Lightroom is an unbeatable program for doing the two most important things to your images- (1) managing and keeping track of them and (2) processing them, with Photoshop playing cleanup when you are finished with Lightroom. I would strongly recommend that you look at these two programs. As far as learning them is concerned, they are so popular that Youtube is full of excellent videos describing beginner and advance technique in both.

Hi Linz.
there is a free browser called irfan view that I used before Photo Mechanic. It does not have the cataloging ability of photo mechanic but is a quickly loading and fast viewing browser. My beef with LR is it's directory structure so we have never bonded...

Hi Don and others- Photo Mechanic is not a cataloguing program at this stage- they have been working on a catalogue add-on for several years and it has not seen the light of day yet. To be specific, a program can be considered a "cataloguing program" if it builds a database of your images which contains image previews and all the information about each image, which then allows you to do quick searches. Cataloguing programs can contain information about images that are on off-line volumes, i.e., not connected to your computer at the time. This is an important aspect of the scaleability of the system to accommodate every-growing image collections. Examples of cataloguing programs would be Lightroom, Aperture, and Phase One Media Pro.

Don- could you spell out the problem you have with Lr "directory structure" or start a new thread on the subject to see if the issue can be resolved.

I'll look for that thread with interest, too. (Just surfacing from thee days of limited connectivity time, so maybe it's already there.)

LR does have some frustrating "features" (don't we all?) but it can work with a range of straightforward folder structures, including descriptive names or your own hierarchical structure if you desire -- i.e a folder named Flowers and inside it folders for Roses, Petunias, etc. Inside Roses you can have different kinds if you're a rose aficionado, or Red Roses, White Roses, etc. But with keywording, the structure isn't as important as it used to be.

Don't want to get off-topic here, but if you look at my website, link below, on the home page under the picture there is a link to a bunch of tutorials. There are 3 on LR 4 that are still completely applicable to the newer versions. They attempt to lay out the basics of what LR is and how it works -- understanding a few basic things about it is vital to using it.

Adobe's current offer (supposedly good till the end of the year) for PS CC + LR for $9.99/month is, as I understand, only good if you had PS CS3 or later. They have made some changes in their offerings and there is conflicting information even within their customer service. PS Elements is very affordable (about $80 from some sources, I think) and offers a very basic version of the organizational capabilities of LR, and is, unfortunately, probably the best place to start right now if budget is a consideration. It offers simpler versions of the capabilities of both LR and PS.

The next step up (and a significant one of it is affordable) is LR + PS Elements. Then at some time, LR + real PS or whatever might come along to compete with it and Adobe's new pricing structure.

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Originally Posted by Diane Miller

In PS I always work in layers. I often do more than Doug does, with adjustment layers and pixel layers (Nik, Topaz, etc.) Nik will make its own layer and you can click on the layer name in the Layers panel and re-name it so you know what it is -- developing a shorthand is very nice. For Topaz, I'll make a copy on the layer, or a composite of all layers below, as needed (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E) then let Topaz work on that one. Adjustment layers are mostly self-explanatory -- you click on them to see what the adjustment was and you can see the mask overlaid on the image with the backslash key.

This doesn't let me see everything I did but it comes close.

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I found this thread as I have a question similar to Liz's--how people keep track of what they have done to a photo.

My workflow is similar to Diane's, except that I use Adobe Elements. I currently save my files as TIFF with all the layers. That way, when I want to describe what I did to the photo (as we do in the OOTB forum) I just look at each layer. Does anyone else do that? Diane, do you save all your layers?

As to Liz's question about what software programs to use, my advice is similar to that of others--start with one program. When you feel comfortable with it (which does not mean knowing how to use all its features), look to see what you would like to do that you can't do now. Figure out if you can do it with the software you have. If not, investigate what software will allow you to do it. Then, try out that new software. I add software one at a time, and not often. I'm a rather slow learner.

Whatever you are doing, Liz, must be working because you are producing wonderful images for OOTB.

I absolutely do save all my layers, both pixel layers and adjustment layers, not just for keeping tack of what I did but for the possibility to go back and tweak adjustments as things improve -- my knowledge, my monitor, my tools and how I see images based on other people's input and the passage of time. There are rare instances when I need to flatten some layers for what would otherwise be very complex cloning. I often just rename the image so the old version is still available if I change my mind later.

For more thoughts on layers, see my sticky on them at the top of the ETL forum.

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Originally Posted by Diane Miller

I absolutely do save all my layers, both pixel layers and adjustment layers, not just for keeping tack of what I did but for the possibility to go back and tweak adjustments as things improve -- my knowledge, my monitor, my tools and how I see images based on other people's input and the passage of time. There are rare instances when I need to flatten some layers for what would otherwise be very complex cloning. I often just rename the image so the old version is still available if I change my mind later.

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Seems we do the same thing. I find, however, that when I make a composite layer so that I can then use Topaz, etc., the layers below are no longer modifiable. Will look at your sticky.

The layers below a composite are modifiable but hidden by the composite, so if you want to modify them you have to redo the composite from the modified layers. That's why I usually go to a new version -- then I can modify the old version and redo my Topaz or whatever on a new flattened version.