Photoshop Post Processing order?

[CathyC]

Hi there, I have been wading through some of these posts and confess to being overwhelmed a bit
I am slowly getting more proficient at PS and would like to know if there is a 'recommended workflow' for PS, you know, the best order to do things like contrast, sharpening, colour correction, etc, etc

I recently have taken to shooting in RAW and making the first lot of corrections in RAW, then opening in PS and making other corrections. I realise this may be a bit like 'how long is a piece of string question', but what is the best order to do these corrections?

At the moment, sharpening is usually one of the last things I do, as well as adding the watermark, but I am not confident that I am doing other corrections in the right order, or in fact, the right way LOL

Are there any resources, either here or on the net, you can point me to? I would prefer step by step instructions over videos on the likes YouTube and such.

[ameerat42]

...I have been wading through some of these posts and confess to being overwhelmed a bit ...

Hmm! Not whelmed at all, then. OK, problem solved. Well, as a bit of a guide only...

I am slowly getting more proficient at PS and would like to know if there is a 'recommended workflow' for PS, you know, the best order to do things like contrast, sharpening, colour correction, etc, etc...

Ans 1: That sounds like good progress. I will say "recommended workflow" for specific things you want to do. Break the processing of an image - I said "an image" to differentiate from "batch" jobs - down into steps, and you have indicated this already. Somewhere early you would want to consider whether the image will need some straightening/cropping/re-sizing/other distortions. Color and tone adjustments would come next and you'd have to decide which to do first, AND whether you do these on the image itself or whether you introduce adjustment layers. The UNDO feature would particularly help here. Finally, attend to the sharpening, but especially if the image has been re-sized.

...I recently have taken to shooting in RAW and making the first lot of corrections in RAW, then opening in PS and making other corrections. I realise this may be a bit like 'how long is a piece of string question', but what is the best order to do these corrections?...

Ans 2: In your RAW conversion, do as much as the program will allow you to do. Mine cannot crop or re-size, for instance, so that's for Photoshop. Have a pretty good idea what you will need to do in Photoshop as you're doing your raw conversion. If you think you've got a major tonal problem - deep shadows, or really bright highlights - then consider whether you need to export the image as a 16-bit tiff to work on in Photoshop. That way you will NOT do a lot of tone and color compression that Photoshop will then - at best - struggle with. Or, from your raw converter, perhaps you may have a couple of versions of the file to blend later, say, one for highlights and one for shadows.

But generally, do as much basic processing of the image as you can in the raw converter.

...At the moment, sharpening is usually one of the last things I do, as well as adding the watermark, but I am not confident that I am doing other corrections in the right order, or in fact, the right way LOL

Are there any resources, either here or on the net, you can point me to? I would prefer step by step instructions over videos on the likes YouTube and such.

Ans 3: Not really any I could tell you about. Some of the ones I have seen are pretty specific, and they're the more useful ones, like how to use layers for sharpening etc. None such on "ideal workflows", as I
don't think there are any.

Ans 4: Good luck and keep at it!

[CathyC]

thanks for that - sounds like I am doing things in order (such that it is)

one thing I did pick up on was your comment about sharpening after resizing

I usually do the edits I want, save PSD, then flatten image, sharpen, then add watermark, then 'save for web' at 72 dpi saving as a JPG, naming the file as DSC_XXXX-web. I then go back to the PSD file, undo last steps up to flatten image. This way, I keep the PSD with all its layers ready for any future adjustments/cropping or producing a full size (300 dpi) version for printing if needed.

Is it better to resize my file in PS (through image size, then select 72 dpi) then save as JPG, or is that ultimately what 'save for web' is doing for me?

[ameerat42]

You usually find that reducing the size often softens the image some.
Am.

[farmmax]

Everyone has an individual work flow that suits them. You seemed to have worked one out that suits you. I was taught years ago to noise reduce first and sharpen last, and on the whole this works for me. My sharpening is always on a different layer, so it is easy to alter later on. Resizing an image often means it could use a different level of sharpening.

When saving .jpg's I don't flatten the psd file, as photoshop automatically does that when saving to a jpg. I save my .psd file, then resize it to the size I want, with either go to file/save as, or to file/ save for web and devices. You often need to resize your file before using Save for Web, because if it is too large, Photoshop brings up a warning about taking a long time to process such a large file. As a guide I use Save for Web on images going to normal web pages where file sizes need to be small for faster download times. For all other jpgs, I tend to use File/Save as, and in the window that comes up, adjust the quality of the the jpg to be saved to get the file size I need. Eg I bring down the quality of the jpg down until the file size reads under 250 kb to upload to this forum.

After saving the jpg file by either of these method, the psd file remains open in Photoshop. If I don't want to do any more work on the psd, I close without saving it. This automatically will undo the resizing changes you made, because you last saved just before you carried out the resizing. If I want to do more work, I have to undo the resizing before I carry on editing. I have boo booed here a few times Forgot to undo the resizing and ended up saving a small psd file.

[CathyC]

thanks for suggestions farmmax so far, I have never had a warning about taking a long time to process when saving for web - must have a reasonable processor on computer
I think I shall continue doing what I have been in relation to saving files, but will definitely try and follow a more regular workflow in processing thanks for the tip on reducing noise first - it makes sense LOL

[Gazza]

I would prefer step by step instructions over videos on the likes YouTube and such.

Hi Cathy, as far as YouTube goes, this bloke Aaron is pretty good at explaining things and doesn't muck around too much either. His web site has lots of free (That magic word) tutorials.
I'm sure you're already finding out that when it comes to PS there are 10 different ways of do the same thing, just a matter of using the method that suits you. (And sticks in the mind)


Hope that makes sense and helps in some way...

Cheers -