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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Processing order preference
Alan Look, Photographer
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Bloomington | IL | United States | Posted: 8:46 PM on 01.19.08 |
->> I haven't seen a really good thread on fundamentals lately. Let's see if this starts one.
I would guess there are as many different processing methods as there are photographers. Let's leave software brands out. It really shouldn't matter if you use CS2, CS3, LightRoom, or even PS5 for this discussion.
What's your order preference and why for the common adjustments... Brightness, contrast, color, noise filtering, sharpness, etc... and do you process each by hand or automate as a batch? |
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Anthony Neste, Photographer
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FLAGLER BEACH, 321 | FL | USA | Posted: 10:56 PM on 01.19.08 |
->> Look Alan..You're right, there are many different processing methods out there and yes lets leave softwear brands out of this. As for me, I process by hand. I prefer the old fashioned way, first I remove the memory card from the camera in the closet, then I proceed to roll it on the tank spool, I like the Patterson spool with the ball bearings it's a lot easier to roll not like the metal wagon wheel style spool.
Second, then depending how many cards are in the tank I mix the appropriate amount of chemistry (6oz per card), I prefer Microdol-X because it gives much tigher pixel patterns than D-76.
Third, check temperature to be 68 degrees, about 3 minutes more or less depending on what speed you rated the card at. Don't forget to agitate the tank with a little tap to losen the air bubbles that might have stuck to the outside of the card. Rinse with stop bath, add fix and agitate a minute or so, rinse twice again. Now you can open the door and get out of the closet. Voila! Hopefuly you will have some images you can use to start the next step in this process, proof and print.
Will talk about that next then manual exposure and manual focus.
Hope this helps.
What do you expect it's Saturday night. I couldn't help myself.. |
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Wally Nell, Photographer
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CAIRO | EG | EGYPT | Posted: 11:41 PM on 01.19.08 |
->> And don't forget to mark the cards PUSH ONE STOP or PUSH 1/3RD etc.... else you will forget to do so in the tank...
Sorry couldn't help myself neither... must be the air Downunder or something... |
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Bob Ford, Photographer
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Lehighton | Pa | USA | Posted: 12:24 AM on 01.20.08 |
->> Alan, my proceedure varies slightly, but here's the norm for stuff at the paper.
The first thing I do is create a sub folder in a folder named "To be burned" on my desktop. For example, if I was shooting a high school boys basketball game with Lehighton playing at Palmerton the folder would be named "Leh-Palm BBB". The visiting team is always the first team in the name of the folder.
I then transfer my RAW files from the card to that folder.
Using Bridge I'll go through the thumbnails and pick 3-10 images and open them with Photoshop. I do my basic color and density correction with ACR, then the final tweaking, cropping and captioning in Photoshop. I use levels and sometimes selective color for the slight Photoshop tweaking. I save them as jpegs with a compression of 10, then either email them to the paper, or if I'm in the office I have a hot folder on my desktop to get them into our editorial system.
Also, we have a certain naming system for our editorial system which includes publication date, department and a unique name. So if a photo of Jim Smith might run on the 24th in the sports section it might be named, "24_spts_JSmith". Then when the sports department looks at the sports photo module for the 24th the thumbnail will be there. Double clicking the thumb will open it bigger.
Once the deadline stuff is done all of the photos will be imported into Lightroom. The photos get a quick toning, limited cropping, then exported as 600 pixel jpegs for a web gallery. Once the photos are uploaded to the web the small jpegs are thrown out and the original RAW files go onto a server for archiving, and also transferred to an external harddrive for backup. The photos on the server are sorted into sub folders by Year, season (Wnter, Spring, Summer, Fall), sport, gender, and game. They're pretty easy to find after the fact.
If it's a news assignment everything is the same except I name the folder differently, and not all of news stuff goes onto the web. The folder would be named something like "1-14 JT fire", which would be a Jan. 14 fire in Jim Thorpe.
I hope this is what you were looking for. |
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Alan Look, Photographer
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Bloomington | IL | United States | Posted: 9:13 AM on 01.20.08 |
->> Anthony & Wally - I guess I was a little heavy for a Saturday night. It's good to see some humor alive and well on the boards.
Bob - your spot on. The idea is to exchange process flows and ideas to help everyone evaluate their own and others in an attempt to make everyone's images a bit better.
I generally use a certain method. Could it be changed for the better? Probably.
I generally ingest using PM, sort the out of focus or other undesireable takes using color class, caption, sort by color class, rename according to specs set by client.
Off to PhotoShop. Generally I adjust for contrast, brightness, and color in that order. If needed I apply my noise filter and save as a 12. Sometimes I do those steps in an action, sometimes I'll do it individually. If in an action, I wil then open the images again to crop and tweek the exposures if needed. If not in an action, I include all this on one pass.
From there on, it all depends on where the image is going. Some places the images get reopened to save more compressed.
Those are the kinds of things I'm interested in. Is the order good, bad, etc. Do others have a better method. Does it make a difference if you do the color adjustment 1st or 3rd. Should the noise filter be applied first or last.
I just think it would be an interesting discussion. I'm sure there are many out there that understand that stuff better than I. |
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Bob Ford, Photographer
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Lehighton | Pa | USA | Posted: 9:41 AM on 01.20.08 |
| ->> Alan, one thing I'd suggest is to use either levels or curves for your color and density corrections. Brightness and contrast are what Photoshop expert call a "destuctive method" of correction. Levels and curves are both non-destructive, plus they give you greater versatilty. |
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Jason Joseph, Photographer
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Dublin | OH | USA | Posted: 9:46 AM on 01.20.08 |
| ->> Right now I use Aperture 100% of the time. Yes it is slow, but I currently don't have deadlines to meet since I am not a journalist. I am however looking for a faster, more streamlined method. So thanks for bringing this thread to life. I am considering using a flow similar to yours Alan. I want to try using Photo Mechanic as the first step to sort, caption, adjust IPTC data, and create a backup. After this I want to import into my Aperture library. The first thing I generally do in Aperture is to relocate the master files to an external hard drive for safe keeping. In Aperture I will make the visual adjustments necessary and eventually upload to my PhotoShelter account and send whichever images whichever direction they need to go (client, website, etc.). |
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Joe Brown, Photographer
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Woburn | MA | USA | Posted: 11:06 PM on 01.20.08 |
->> Hi Alan -
Here is the system I use: Card ingested by ACDC onto one specific harddrive and by date. Then I sort the photos by event, and if they are NOT for the newspaper, then they are transferred to a different drive.
The sorted jpg's (I do NOT shoot raw for the newspaper - the D300 jpg's are more than perfect) are exported to PS and cropping, toning, curves and high pass sharpening applied. Saved to make a file size from 1 - 2 MB and then emailed to the paper.
Anything going onto my sales website are copied to a drive of just webphotos and uploaded to photoreflect for web sales.
Everything is then burned to DVD for backup and storage, and moved to an external hdd for easy access.
Hope this helps!
joe brown |
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