image post processing

[Groucho]

Yes, Lightroom is giving me a lot more control. It also makes the editing much easier and faster, so I'm more likely to take the time to give each photo a little individual attention - picking neutral shades to fine-tune white balance, brightening up colors, etc. Lightroom also makes it fairly painless to do dust removal, and I also often adjust fill light, recovery (brings back blown-out areas if possible), vibrancy, and sometimes black, in order to make a more pleasing photo.

It's always a tough call, though; sometimes looking at the earlier ones side-by-side, I find that I prefer the original, untweaked image. Fortunately Lightroom has really nice options for showing you before and after, side by side or split and variations thereof.

Here's one that I do prefer the later version of, as an example of what you can do... here's the more or less straight JPG conversion:

Now here's some color correction and fill light to bring out some carpet detail.

Unfortunately, some constrast is necessarily lost when bringing up the fill light, but you can tweak that a bit more.

Here's another one... before and after.

There are obviously quite a few more, though looking at them side by side, I'm already thinking I'm going to have to go back and redo a few again as I prefer the original colors or contrast sometimes. It never ends!

I haven't done it so much with the WDW shots yet, but sometimes it can be fun to really adjust the colors for a stronger effect... here's a couple shots I did where the colors are not necessarily very true to life!

Oh, the other reason for going through them again is for keywording - I had already tagged them all with either the park name, downtown, or a resort name, but with so many shots, I could still use to get more granular to help find a specific shot in the future. And then there's the easy straightening... quick cropping... etc, etc. It's not too tricky to use but I'm very glad that I did some training to help take advantage of some of the features and shortcuts that I'm sure that I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

 

[Lizziejane]

Jen - can hardly wait to see your photos!!

Speaking of lightroom, someone recently posted a link to ononesoftware.com
They have a free download of presets for lightroom, and we installed it last night. So far, I've found it to be very easy to use and I much prefer the results to the mess I was making on my own. I think I may be a RAW convert!

 

[Lizziejane]

OK I have the grand total of photos taken..... 2,498!

Now I have no idea how many of those are "share worthy". I am converting from raw to tiff now. I have the trip to WDW done as well as our first official day. That is all I am doing for now - it is getting late and I am getting sleepy.

I meant to ask - 2,498 shots in RAW - how many compact flash cards would a person need for that?!

 

[DVC Jen]

I meant to ask - 2,498 shots in RAW - how many compact flash cards would a person need for that?!

I have four. 2 - 2gig, 1 - 1gig and a 256 I think. I only used the 2 gig cards and each night my DH burned the photos as raw files to dvd's. I can't read a DVD on this pc though. I needed more hard drive space so we went out and got a 350gig harddrive and he then transferred them directly to it.

I'm not quite as happy with the three days worth that I have gone through today. I can clearly see what I did wrong. Feeling rushed to snap a picture when you are very clearly still in the learning process as far as setting up a good composition - getting your exposure right and having 3 family members sighing isn't all that easy.

Groucho - thanks. I am going to go check out lightroom. I really like the tweaks you made to your photos. I hope some of mine turn out that well.

 

[Lizziejane]

Feeling rushed to snap a picture when you are very clearly still in the learning process as far as setting up a good composition - getting your exposure right and having 3 family members sighing isn't all that easy.

I think we all experience that - the sighing family members. I'm surprised no one has organized a DIS photographers meet - family members excluded!

 

[wdwpluto]

I'm assuming that some of you photoshop users out there use actions in your post processing. Anyone care to share your own actions or links to free actions?

 

[grumpy2]

Jen, loved your pics, especially those at the WL (my favorite, DW's is CR). I'm sure you probably have been asked but, what kind of camera did you use. Your pics are far superior to mine. Thanks Dave

 

[DVC Jen]

Jen, loved your pics, especially those at the WL (my favorite, DW's is CR). I'm sure you probably have been asked but, what kind of camera did you use. Your pics are far superior to mine. Thanks Dave

Wow you made my day. Thanks.

I don't have all of the photos uploaded to my smugmug Disney gallery YET - just finished June 1st - 7th. I am hoping to have the 8th if not the 9th up yet by tonight. There will be more WL photos in there - I think I took a few nearly every day.

I had both of my cameras with me a Canon XTi and Canon 30D. I used the 30D most of the time. I did use the XTi on the 14th along with my tripod to get some decent (better than handheld) shots of Wishes. Those will be the last ones I get up. The tripod made such a difference - and they would have turned to be something I am super happy with if it weren't for the guy with the hat that snuck in front of my tripod at the last minute. So the majority of the photos have the bottom part of the castle covered up by what I now refer to has "hat head guy".

 

[Tickla]

I read on an old post that if you have a dslr you are expected to post process to make the pictures look right, but you don't have to on a point & shoot--is this right? I have wanted a dslr for awhile, but I don't do anything on my computer with my current digital camera,and don't want to either--I just take pics, bring the mem.card in & get a cd & prints made--so maybe something like a Canon S3-IS would be better for me? (I wan't a new camera). Please help me!

 

[jann1033]

unless you shoot raw, you wouldn't have to post process anything so with jpg if you really don't want to crop or sharpen or anything you wouldn't have to do anything different than with a p&S. raw on the other hand, has to be processed. i am presuming you probably download your stuff now but if not guess you could just take the memory card to where ever you take to print them.

now the editorial comment why not learn to do at least the basics that come with your digital camera? you can make the photos so much nicer imo

you might rather have a camera with scene modes, most dslr are more limited there. ( ie fireworks, pets and kids, things like that are on a bridge not a dslr) if so you probably would be happier with a bridge type camera( ie canon s3 or s5 etc)

 

[deletedpenguin]

It's not a must, unless you shoot in RAW format, but I've got a series of PPing actions in PS that I do.

 

[ukcatfan]

I agree with what Jann said, but let me ask you a question. What are the reasons that you think you need a DSLR? Do not take too much weight on how the users of this board talk about their DSLRs. We just like to talk too much It is true that a DSLR can take better pictures than a p&s, but only if you are willing to put in a little effort. If you are not much on post processing, you might also be someone that prefers to shoot mainly in auto modes. If so, you might be happier with a bridge camera.

Also, there are p&s models that offer RAW and they would need post processing as well.

Kevin

 

[MICKEY88]

once again I will be the one to respectfully disagree ...


a properly exposed raw file does not require post processing, y'all may choose to do so to tweak the pic the way you want it, but it's not neccessary..


I 've shot thousands of raw pics and the only thing I do to most of them is open and resave as jpegs.

I suppose technically that is post processing, but it doesn't take any special skills or knowledge to do so

 

[ukcatfan]

a properly exposed raw file does not require post processing, y'all may choose to do so to tweak the pic the way you want it, but it's not neccessary..

Yes, but the exposure has nothing to do with the white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpening, etc. Because the RAW file applies none of those things, it will likely never look as good as a JPG shot under the exact same situation. You can always have a default value in your RAW processor for these though.

Kevin

 

[MICKEY88]

Yes, but the exposure has nothing to do with the white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpening, etc. Because the RAW file applies none of those things, it will likely never look as good as a JPG shot under the exact same situation. You can always have a default value in your RAW processor for these though.

Kevin

again I respectfully disagree when I shoot raw I actually shoot raw/jpeg mode.. and if I've nailed the exposure, the raw file looks just as good as the jpeg, perhaps the difference is I use a Minolta 7D.

minolta is known for minimizing in camera processing, to give pics a more natural look,


when shooting in daylight no white balance setting is needed, contrast would be natural as would be saturation and sharpening, so what processing is needed.

raw captures all info that is there, so if your exposure is right on, all other things would be accurate as well.., they might not be tweaked or increased as people have been accustomed to with in camera processing, but they would be accurate..

 

[Furgus]

I have to agree with 88 on this one. I have plenty of shots I shot in RAW and JPEG, and the RAWs look a lot better to me without doing anything to them. I think it is because of the lossless compression, and the more dynamic range of the picture. Course I could be way off.
I rarely shot film, but did film every have "white balance"
I usually keep all of my RAWs "as shot"

 

[MICKEY88]

I have to agree with 88 on this one. I have plenty of shots I shot in RAW and JPEG, and the RAWs look a lot better to me without doing anything to them. I think it is because of the lossless compression, and the more dynamic range of the picture. Course I could be way off.
I rarely shot film, but did film every have "white balance"
I usually keep all of my RAWs "as shot"

film didn't have white balance per se,,, color corrections were done either with filters or with the printing machine

 

[Furgus]

Yeah that is pretty much what I thought...

 

[Anewman]

once again I will be the one to respectfully disagree ...


a properly exposed raw file does not require post processing, y'all may choose to do so to tweak the pic the way you want it, but it's not neccessary..


I 've shot thousands of raw pics and the only thing I do to most of them is open and resave as jpegs.

I suppose technically that is post processing, but it doesn't take any special skills or knowledge to do so

I think I understand your point that RAW images do not need to be EDITED(tweaked), but yes they do require processing as you admitted to be technically doing.

But, You say you just "OPEN" them but what exactly does that mean? depending on what software(and settings) you use to "OPEN" those perfectly exposed shots the results would vary greatly.

Default settings on most converters are set to automatically make adjustments when the RAW file is opened, you are right there is no skill required.

 

[ukcatfan]

I rarely shot film, but did film every have "white balance"

You can also use different types/brands of film to get different effects similar to what WB does for digital.

Kevin