Post-Processing Part I

Post-Processing. There are entire books written on this subject. How do you narrow down this plethora of information to manageable chunks? Well, I'll start by asking; do you like it RAW? I sure do. Get your mind out of the gutter...I'm talking about your file format! If you are serious about your photography, you better be recording in RAW format. Leave jpeg to snapshots and family photos. Set your file format to RAW, and you will have as much control as possible when manipulating your images. What? You're not manipulating your images? This is worse than I thought.

The best way to approach this topic is to explain my workflow, and go through it step by step. Of course, you need to establish a workflow that works best for you.

I will use a single photo, and show the transformation of the photo from capture to finished product. Let's start with the photo directly from the camera:

This photo is the basis for the workflow demonstration. As you can see, the shot is slightly crooked, which by the way is a huge pet peeve of mine. Nothing bothers me more than when I see a seascape that is slanted. It looks like all the water should be running off the edge of the page. I've seen professional photographers selling crooked photos! Do these people not look a their own work! Whoa! Sorry about that, I got a little carried away.

Being underexposed, there is very little detail in the shadows. The good news is, the background is not blown out (overexposed). I'd also like to tighten the crop up some. Finally, the photo is a bit cool, and I'd like to warm it up.

Before I start, I have to say that I am making these edits on a laptop with a screen that is not calibrated. I would ususlly be doing this on my home computer which I keep calibrated. Since I'm away from my office, I'm hoping you are getting some semblance of a proper exposure.

OK, first thing I do, after sorting through hundreds of photos, is to pick a few that might end up interesting. Sometimes, you'll find a diamond in the rough. A shot that as-is may not be all that spectacular, but after some finessing, you can end up with a very nice photo.

Since I use Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom, which I highly reccommend by the way, I'll be referencing the commands available to me with this software. In many casses, similar commands will be available to you depending on the software you are using.

To see what kind of details and exposures I'm working with, I will sometimes start with lighting. That way, if a photo is too far gone, I'll drop it right away. In many cases, I'll crop first if the lighting is a no-brainer. In this case, the lighting is suspect, so I'll go there first.

Since I'd like to bring back the detail and color in the water, I'll start by sliding the "Recovery" slider to the right. This lowers the exposure of the highlights. You can see it brought back some of the detail, but not as much as I'd like.

In this case, I'll drop the exposure of the entire shot enough to bring the water to where I want it.
You can see that the entire photo is now well underexposed, but the central area is where I want it. What I'll do now is enhance the shadows using the "Fill Light" Slider. Remember, since we are shooting in RAW format, all the information in each pixel is there, we are just bringing out the best in each one.

OK, now this is starting to look really funky. By now you are asking, "Does this guy really know what the heck he is doing?" Now that you mention it, I guess I never really did say I knew what I was doing. This photo is now very washed out, and beginning to take on an HDR look. For those of you who don't know what HDR is, here is a search on flickr.

Finally, I will add in some of the Blacks using the "Blacks" slider.

This is still showing up on my screen as pretty dark, so i'll mess around with the sliders a little more to get it where I like it. You won't usually get a photo with this much contrast to come out the way you want without some trial and error. In fact, that is what makes Photoshop Lightroom ideal for photographers. All the edits you do to your photos never change the original file. At any time, you can go right back to the original and start again. It's called non-destructive editing, and as far as I'm concerned ints one of the best things that's ever happened to digital photography. Again, I digress.

Here is the same photo in a form that I am happy with at this point. As you can see, I had to sacrifice some detail and color in the water since there is only so much you can do with the lighting that you have. Don't fret though, I'll show you what other options we have to address this issue.



There is quite a bit more to do to this photo, so I'll save that for later.