Editing Workflow Plan - Assistance Required

[Snooks]

Hi Guys

So I have been taking photos and then I rush back in, upload them to the pc and see what I have. From there, I jump willy nilly into editing.

I may adjust the brightness, the exposure, add or remove some contrast and then no doubt I do other changes that should have been done last. Sometimes I know that I have amplified issues and made things worse.

I do not know when to crop to size? Do I do that first so I am working on smaller files?

Do I adjust basic colours etc first and then look at composing and cropping?

I need an efficient and authorized workflow plan because what I am doing is not working!

I work in RAW at first, adjust the white balance and then convert to jpeg so i can work in GIMP. I may have to change that and I realize that I may have no choice...... I need someone to suggest how they approach the whole editing thing, step by step.

If you can spare the time to post your editing plan or ideas, it would be of great assistance.

[ameerat42]

Hi Guys

...From there, I jump willy nilly into editing.

I may adjust the brightness, the exposure, add or remove some contrast and then no doubt I do other changes that should have been done last. Sometimes I know that I have amplified issues and made things worse.

I do not know when to crop to size? Do I do that first so I am working on smaller files?

Do I adjust basic colours etc first and then look at composing and cropping?

I need an efficient and authorized workflow plan because what I am doing is not working!

I work in RAW at first, adjust the white balance and then convert to jpeg so i can work in GIMP. I may have to change that and I realize that I may have no choice...... I need someone to suggest how they approach the whole editing thing, step by step...

It's good you have a method already. The details show that you have some idea of what you're doing
so that willy-nilly bird species may not be the right name for your workflow.

I will just describe what you need to essentially do, without too many specific instances, as these will
differ from yours and from other people's, and the detail may not be relevant.

1) Aim is to convert the raw image from your camera into something workable for another system.
This may be displaying (invariably as jpeg) on the net, or to get some prints done. I'll stick to the first.

2) In doing so, you try to maintain as much of the original info of the raw file as possible, and to "fix"
any tonal and other compositional errors. Reason: In going from raw to jpeg you want good gradation
in colour and tone, trying to maintain the brightest and darkest as much as possible, and without too
many jumps in between (which is usually shown as "banding").

(Of course, you can ditch much of point 2 if you're trying to produce something abstract where such
things may not be so important.)

3) You usually do the conversion from raw to jpeg when you have done as much as you can in the
raw editor (point 2). Save as a jpeg at the maximum quality setting. Change that after re-sizing, if it is
necessary.

4) Rotation and cropping is usually done after the color and tone adjustments. This may be done in the
raw editor - but look out for what happens to the raw file - or, as I do, on a full-size jpeg saved from the
worked raw file.

5) Re-sizing is usually done on the full-size jpeg. Tonal gradation should be maintained during this step, but if
any banding becomes evident then you may have to revisit the raw file.

6) After re-sizing, a mild sharpening may be required. (Too many reasons to say why and lots more opinions.)
Since sharpening involves a contrast change between different tones of an image, other artifacts may
appear, such as edge haloes.

7) Final jpeg save: after re-sizing - properly, re-sampling - to the desired image size (say 1200 pixels
as for AP), try a save first at the maximum jpeg quality (12 in Photoshop). If the file size is still over the max
400 KB requirement, re-do the save on the still open image using a lower quality setting, and overwrite the
file name you just saved. Repeat until you get the right size. NOTE that this does NOT degrade the saved file
as you still have the original image open in the editor. File degradation occurs when you re-open a saved file
and do the above steps.

OK, so that's my general gist of things.

[Bear Dale]

YouTube can be a great friend for PP tutorials. I use it all the time, don't gel with the first person showing a tutorial? Just go to the next, some people just have that real teachers knack of imparting knowledge.

Whatever you want to know there's a 99.9% that someone has taken the time to make a YouTube tutorial about it!

[Bianca]

Snooks, I don't know what you're using to process and convert from RAW, but:

1. Do as much as you can in that RAW editor program eg exposure, white balance etc, because RAW files contain much more information and allow editing without loss. If there's effects or local adjustments (eg cloning something out) that need to be done to your image that your RAW editor can't cope with, export the photo to TIFF. TIFF files are huge but lossless and GIMP supports them. (JPEG (jpg) files are compressed files and each opening and saving will lead to degradation of the image.)

2. Do your further editing in GIMP and save your file as TIFF (overwrite it) each time. Do whatever you couldn't do in your RAW editor here in GIMP. Then, when you want to show or post your image:

3. Open your TIFF file in GIMP and do your export to jpg at the size you want (eg 1200px for AP) and the highest quality you can do and still be at a reasonable size (400kb for AP) .

[Snooks]

Awesome information and exactly what I needed. Obviously it can change according to numerous variables, but at least I have a firm plan and a formal path to go down so I don't just do things adhoc.

Thank you for that.
Now....... what will be lurking around tomorrow that I can practice on ?

[Tannin]

Do it whichever way works best for you.

One tip, don't convert to JPG until the very last step. Do all your intermediate saves in a loss-free format. Your best choice is almost certainly TIFF. GIMP will happily read TIFF files.

[Mark L]

AM said "5) Re-sizing is usually done on the full-size jpeg." I don't agree. As Tony mentioned in the previous post here the last thing you want to do is convert to JPG. You are re-sizing with a larger file if you do it before converting to JPG.

[Geoff79]

I’ll post my general workflow as it probably suits someone relatively new to photography. For, as is the person typing this, it’s a pretty simple workflow.

Not only do I welcome... but I encourage more experienced members to point out glaring faults because I’m not currently overly happy with my output, so always looking for those extra tips.

Anyway, Snooks, more or less as per my post on your recent train thread;

RAW file;
(If necessary, tweak white balance if you’re displeased with it)
1. Right or wrong, first thing I do when I open my raw file is straighten and crop
2. Adjust shadows and highlights in order to try and correct blown highlights and very dark shadows

Then I open in PS, personally;
3. Adjust contrast (I like auto-levels in PS as it gives you four potential outcomes to choose from)
4. Reduce noise
5. Sharpen (I guess you could switch these two around just as easy)
6. Final contrast adjustment to suit

I know that’s basic and doesn’t go into the detail others above provide, but like I say, right or wrong this is how I roll.

[Snooks]

Thanks Geoff.

I haven't got any images to work on until tomorrow evening at that Car Show. I wandered through an old church yesterday and took some photos including a very old cemetery, I will try the work flow plan on one of those later today.

Sounds nice and simple and certainly worth trying.

A couple of questions if you or someone else can assist:

1. Exposure Control Vs Brightness -Altering these makes the images brighter. Is there really any difference between the function?

2. When I "sharpen" something it makes the whole thing much noisier and also more contrasty or grainy. So what is the difference between sharpening and contrasting?

Thanks for the tips

[Geoff79]

Oh dear, Snooks. There are much more experienced and knowledgeable members here that I hope can help you out with the technicalities.

I don’t actually know difference between exposure and Brightness. All I know is that I never, ever, ever use the Brightness slider, ever. As I never have use for it.

Regarding sharpening, I believe many don’t sharpen until they actually post a photo somewhere. Because if you take a good photo it shouldn’t need sharpening. But, if you do want/need to apply sharpening, I urge you to look up some tutorials on layers and the art of only brushing in the sharpening (or whatever other edits you make) to the parts of the photo you want sharpened - not the entire image.

Sorry mate. I like taking photos and have a basic understanding of editing stuff. But when it comes to technicalities and knowledgeable advice on the ins and outs of photography, there are far, far wiser people here to explain this stuff to you.

[ameerat42]

...

1. Exposure Control Vs Brightness -Altering these makes the images brighter. Is there really any difference between the function?

2. When I "sharpen" something it makes the whole thing much noisier and also more contrasty or grainy. So what is the difference between sharpening and contrasting?...

Basically,
Brightness adds the same value to every tone in an image. (Iit makes the mid-tones equal in value to the highlight.)
ie, Black = 0, Mid-tone = 127, Highlight = 255. Max "Brightness" shifts "Black" → 127 and "Mid-tone" → 255.

Exposure (which tries to simulate what happens in the camera) can drag every tone from 0 to 255.
It affects the lighter tones more than the darker tones.

To see the difference in operation, make sure you have your Histogram displayed and try each function on an image
in turn. Cancel the first function, eg Brightness, before trying Exposure.

Sharpening works by enhancing the contrast changes across "edges" in an image. To see what edges look like, run that
filter over an image. The main sharpening tool that GIMP shows is "Unsharp Mask" (you look that up). It's default settings
show 3 pixels of radius. A lesser value will reduce the sharpening and therefore the graininess. You also lessen the effect
by using the threshold control (also you look up).

Contrast is applied to tones, where highs are made higher and shadows are made darker. Mid-tones are "sent either way"
according to the settings of the function and things like Gamma and Offset.

[John King]

Snooks, IME the less one does to an image, the better - less is more!

If anyone can tell that I've edited an image, it usually means that I've gone too far ...

I always recommend that people use an aRGB 16 bit colour space for editing and save as a 16 bit lossless TIFF file for storage. Only resize to an 8 bit sRGB JPEG as your last step before uploading. Save to a different filename - e.g. original.tiff saved as original_E.jpg, or whatever.

[Snooks]

Thanks for the comments and tips everyone. I will read them again and clarify because some only half sunk in. Later I will try the suggestions out on a random image and that should help me.

Thanks again.

[ameerat42]

Snooks. You can repay us - or me

How do you display more than one image in GIMP?
Big time

[Snooks]

Snooks. You can repay us - or me

How do you display more than one image in GIMP?
Big time

I don't quite understand your question. I do often edit two images at the same time in GIMP, simply by opening one image and then opening a new image and you switch between them. Perfect for cut and pastes, copy, cloning etc, if that's what you mean.

[ameerat42]

It is. That's what I sadly found yesterday. You can't display them side-by-side

[John King]

You can in FSV or Bridge.

FSV even displays raw files, just hit Ctrl+a to display the raw file, rather than the embedded JPEG.

[arthurking83]

I've commented before:

Use ViewNX2(for D200 files, very good program)

In VNX2, start from the top(RHS Pane), program defaults to the Metadata tab(which is actually a good thing! .. I'll explain later). On the RHS click the Metadata tab to close it, and it will reveal all the tools in the Adjustments tab.
From there you see the exposure, WB, and various other adjustments tools. Start from the top and work your way down as required.
For me, it's usually ends with choosing a Picture Control that suits, sometimes Vivid, sometimes Portrait .. it depends on how the image was exposed, and how harsh/soft the light was at the time of exposure.

Note, once you set the Picture Control, and lets say you used a contrasty Picture Control like 'Vivid' .. it then pays to use the finer adjustment tools below this named contrast/brightness/highlight/shadow .. don't use the sharpness tool tho(reason is that it's very coarse!)

You could try D-Lighting tool and colour booster, but I don't like the way they operate, you can do this later in Gimp .. it's up to you, but ViewNX2(ie. the raw file converter, is to get the raw file close to being edited on a very subtle scale).

ViewNX2 will not clone/heal, or manipulate pixels in hideous ways(like Ps, GIMP, etc) .. it's a basic raw file editor/converter.

Once you have the raw file very close to how you want it to look, you then use a short cut link (that you create) to GIMP to edit a tif file in GIMP. You don't need to go through the additional steps to create a tif file, it will do that for you.

In VNX2
1/. look at the upper toolbar, find the Edit tab, scroll down to the Options link. A box will open up once you do this.
2/. you may or may not have any open with links to start with(it depends on how it was installed). With this box open, on the LHS section look for the Open with Application setting. Click this
3/. once you click that if there is nothing listed in the larger central area, you have no apps linked. Look for the [Add] below the larger area. Hit that.
4/. it varies on what happens here, and you need to know where all your programs are installed, if you have a 64bit PC, or 32bit .. etc. If no applicable programs populate the list when you hit [Add], then click the [Other] button.
By default, it assumes you're in a 64bit OS environment, so you're using 64bit programs. If GIMP is 32bit only, you won't see the link to it, you have to navigate to find it. So, GIMP will either be easily found, but if your PC is 64bit(most are nowadays), you need to navigate out of the Program Files folder, and into the Program Files(x86) folder, if GIMP is 32bit only. I dunno how your PC is setup.
5/. once you find your way through all of that, you need to locate the .exe file for GIMP, and click on that for this to work. Once you find the GIMP.exe file, double click on it, it's then is added to the list of Open with programs.

if you can successfully get through this, now in ViewNX2, once you've added your basic raw edits, you can either rightclick the file on screen and Open with ... it will show you GIMP as an option to open the file with.
OR!! .. you can do one more step to make this easy too ..
6/. up high in the window there are icons to tools such as Convert, Movie Editor, etc, etc. there is a large blank section. Right Click the blank section and scroll down to customise. when you hover the mouse over customise, a long box will pop up, and you will see the Open with option to GIMP you just made, click that. This then creates a shortcut to GIMP you use as you need.

What all this does, is to allow ViewNX2 to create a tif file of the image(s) you select and automagically open it/them up in GIMP. You don't need to go through the steps to convert, it does it for you. All 16bit and no compression(ie. about as good quality as you want/need).

From there, you then play in GIMP.
I still reckon once you edit using CNX-D(for all it's woefullness) and use the Colour Control Point edit method, you won't find an easier way to edit only in NEF file mode.
That is, forget tif, it's a space wasting bloated file type that is long overdue for replacement as the default image file type of choice.
I edit the NEF files, saves a ton of HDD space.

Now back to the top(and why I use VNX2) .. still!
Back to to the topic of Metadata. I strongly urge you to keyword your raw files, and the best way to do this is via VNX2.
In the Metadata tab, scroll down just a little, and look for the section that is marked Tags -> Keywords.
it's a white box where you add words that get embedded into your NEF files. So for a photo of a Cockatoo, just for now, add the word Cockatoo into this box and hit the small save icon.
Doing this from the get go, will save you a world of pain later, when you have many thousands of images of stuff, and you can't locate them easily.

I can explain how to use this metadata stuff in another thread, and you don't need much in the way of software to help with that.

[Snooks]

Hi arthurking83.

Twice i have installed that software, twice I fiddled and did not like it. But as soon as I finish typing this post I intend to install it and try it again. You make it sound so functional and enticing and I back your opinion 100%, so I figure it is worth pursuing.

Thank you for the info above, a lot went over my head in the technical pc department but I will check it all again, I will re-read the post with the software open in a different tab.

That should help

Cheers.

[arthurking83]

....

Twice i have installed that software, twice I fiddled and did not like it. But as soon as I finish typing this post I intend to install it and try it again. ....

I'm curious as to what you didn't like .. speed? ... workflow? .. final output? ... etc.

It's hard to recommend appropriate software for you as we don't know what computer system and specs you're running with.

Most of us assume a Windows PC of some description.
If so, are you using a laptop as your primary PC? if a desktop, is it 64bit, or 32bit.
What CPU, what hard drive(s), how much RAM ... etc, etc.

I don't have a very powerful PC, but it's more than adequate for my non gaming, primarily photo editing, sometimes video work(encoding) etc, etc.

Many software simply run badly, I never had any luck running Adobe's LR nor Ps.
Nikon's software can run quite quickly, with the caveat that you have at least one separate, and very fast hard drive where the raw files are stored.
ViewNX2 was always one of Nikon's quickest and most stable software, and Capture NX2 was more like a Ps/GIMP type editor where you could do local editing.
Note that local editing is spot editing, or brush editing on various points within an image .. global editing is when you make an edit on the entire image, like whitebalance and so forth.
ViewnX2 is global editing only, doesn't do local editing. That's not the point of VNX2!! it's a simple and quick browser/converter for NEF file.
Any localised editing, you need other software.
I've used GIMP, but prefer PaintDotNet. GIMP had long since been uninstalled, but PDN remained over many PCs over the past 10 + years or so.

For localised editing, I still use Nikon's really old, and discontinued CaptureNX2. I like the colour control point method of editing(it's equivalent to 'point and shoot').

Nikon's newest software ViewNX-i and CaptureNX-D have been a backward step(on my PCs) in terms of usability and ability. I don't like either of them. I have them installed, and very occasionally I use CNX-D, but it's woefully slow and painful to edit with.
In terms of speed(of doing stuff and viewing images) my primary software are: ViewNX2, Faststone FSViewer, and CaptureNX2.
I also recently got DxO's Photolab too, as it also uses colour control point editing, and it's not as quick as any of those software on D800 files.

Oh! and I assume you're looking for freeware/free/open source software too .. none of this pay for proprietary stuff!