What order to process

[Duane Pipe]

Help needed in PP. The order I do it in is, Process the raw image in PS i.e. sharpen and enhance and so forth and then Save as jpeg. From there I open back up in PS were I do a little more processing then crop and resize, The trouble i am having is that i seem to loose vibrancy and sharpness once the final image is saved. All help is appreciated and thanks in advance. Regards Dave

[William]

If you just have PS , Do as your doing and process the RAW image , Make sure your colour space is sRGB not Adobe RGB , Save as a TIFF file , Then only convert to JPEG once your ready to upload it to the Web , Thats pretty quick , But it may help - Bill , I'm sure others might have a different way

[ricktas]

Sharpening should not be done until the final stage, just before you save as JPG. Agree with William, leave saving as JPG to final step as well, work with a TIFF PSD file until that stage.

[Duane Pipe]

Thanks For the prompt reply guys. So sRGB not Adobe RGB, I'm knowing nothing about it Bill but I will research it, I am sure it's not hard. So I do all PP on the raw file but sharpen it Rick? Then save as tiff for more PP, Then save as jpeg once i am happy with the final image... Am I in tune or what.. Once again thanks for the help

[ricktas]

You cannot actually do any processing to a RAW file. All edits are done on a copy, so depending what software and how you have your work-flow going, even if you 'open' a RAW file, what you see on screen is a copy, it is usually a TIFF version of the RAW file. But you can change it so it is PSD/JPG etc. It really depends on how you have setup your workflow and settings as to what filetype is used.

My workflow:

*Import, tag and catalogue my photos into Lightroom.
*Open Lightroom develop module and find a photo I want to process
*Perform 'whole of image' processing in Lightroom. Note that Lightroom does not in any way touch my RAW file, it creates a 'sidecar' file with all my edits stored in that.
*Export to Photoshop (as a TIFF)
*Perform all my edits
*Sharpen
*Save full size TIFF (high quality version good for printing etc)
*Watermark
*Resize for Web
*Save as JPG
*Upload JPG version to photobucket for linking into AP

[William]

Thats it Duane , Ricks work flow is the same as mine , Except I dont upload to photobucket , Simply explained Rick,

[Duane Pipe]

Ok Hmm. I had a quick read Thank you Rick And Bill. Sorry Guys I will have to check back later, I appreciate your help ..But The tummies Rumbling

[Duane Pipe]

That's the exact answer I was after Rick. Thank you both once again

[reaction]

I recommend looking at dxo.com , I trialled LR before, and found DXO much simpler and it also has more/more accurate modules.
And is very fast.

[stoj19]

great explanation ricktas!

[erikkooistra]

Thanks ricktas

[elGrando]

My workflow:

*Import, tag and catalogue my photos into Lightroom.
*Open Lightroom develop module and find a photo I want to process
*Perform 'whole of image' processing in Lightroom. Note that Lightroom does not in any way touch my RAW file, it creates a 'sidecar' file with all my edits stored in that.
*Export to Photoshop (as a TIFF)
*Perform all my edits
*Sharpen
*Save full size TIFF (high quality version good for printing etc)
*Watermark
*Resize for Web
*Save as JPG
*Upload JPG version to photobucket for linking into AP

This may sound really stupid rick but i have no experience with PP and want to know what exactly you mean by perform processing in lightroom and then perform edits in PS? Are they not the same, im confused on what the difference between process and edit is.
thanks for the explanation of your workflow, very helpful

[ricktas]

This may sound really stupid rick but i have no experience with PP and want to know what exactly you mean by perform processing in lightroom and then perform edits in PS? Are they not the same, im confused on what the difference between process and edit is.
thanks for the explanation of your workflow, very helpful

I use lightroom as my RAW processor, so do 'whole of image' edits in lightroom, things like:

Cropping of the photo
Exposure Adjustment
Horizon levelling

etc

Then in Photoshop, I do my other adjustments:

Any cloning (removing dust bunnies)
Using layers and layer masks to work on certain parts of the photo
Saturation adjustments (if I want the photo more vibrant, or a mono conversion) I often saturate some parts, while de saturating others (not selective colouring) as I don't remove all colour from areas.
Levels and curves adjustments
Brightening or Darkening specific areas of the photo (vignetting for instance)
Sharpening

This is just how I do it, each person needs to find a workflow that they can use. I probably do not use all the features of lightroom and could do a lot more in it, but I started out with lightroom V1 beta (as I came from the Pixmantec Raw Shooter brigade), and at that point lightroom was DAM software with a RAW processor built in. I got my workflow down and like, it and have thus stuck to it. I know several people who use Lightroom a lot more intensely than I do, but it is what works for each of us.

*Pixmantec Raw Shooter : was a damn fine raw editor, that Adobe purchased the company to get access to their RAW algorithms so it could develop Lightroom. Raw Shooter was the engine behind the original Lightroom. All people who owned Raw Shooter got a free copy of the early versions of Lightroom, including beta's of it before it was available to the public.

[elGrando]

I use lightroom as my RAW processor, so do 'whole of image' edits in lightroom, things like:

Cropping of the photo
Exposure Adjustment
Horizon levelling

etc

Then in Photoshop, I do my other adjustments:

Any cloning (removing dust bunnies)
Using layers and layer masks to work on certain parts of the photo
Saturation adjustments (if I want the photo more vibrant, or a mono conversion) I often saturate some parts, while de saturating others (not selective colouring) as I don't remove all colour from areas.
Levels and curves adjustments
Brightening or Darkening specific areas of the photo (vignetting for instance)
Sharpening

This is just how I do it, each person needs to find a workflow that they can use. I probably do not use all the features of lightroom and could do a lot more in it, but I started out with lightroom V1 beta (as I came from the Pixmantec Raw Shooter brigade), and at that point lightroom was DAM software with a RAW processor built in. I got my workflow down and like, it and have thus stuck to it. I know several people who use Lightroom a lot more intensely than I do, but it is what works for each of us.

*Pixmantec Raw Shooter : was a damn fine raw editor, that Adobe purchased the company to get access to their RAW algorithms so it could develop Lightroom. Raw Shooter was the engine behind the original Lightroom. All people who owned Raw Shooter got a free copy of the early versions of Lightroom, including beta's of it before it was available to the public.

Thanks for that rick. I am yet to purchase any software for editing so wasnt sure what functions each of them had. Lightroom has been recomended by a lot of people as I have issues with storing and cataloging my images. Am leaning towards it and sticking with the free GIMP to do some PP to.

[Gremlin]

elGrando adobe I think still has a trial version of Lightroom, for cataloging and basic editing, worth every cent! Im a complete clueless person when it comes to this stuff(digital pfft puke etc) but Lightroom is great. And thats coming from someone whos come into digital kicking and screaming!
Good wf Rick I should modify mine!

[James T]

You should do as much as you can at the 'raw' stage, so in Lightroom / Aperture / ACR whatever you use. This is where you have the most data and are going to retain the best quality, especially when you start pushing the levels around (using curves, changing white balance and colours, etc).

Once you've done all you can in your raw processor, if there are still local changes or further adjustments then export to Photoshop if you need. I do this from Lightroom as a PSD, TIFFs are stupidly huge and just get used for printing.

Once you've done all you're doing, save the PSD with all its layers. You can then flatten it, sharpen and resize for your final use, sharpen it again at the smaller size and save as a JPEG or whatever you need for final output (obviously not saving over your master PSD with all the layers).

You could probably do a degree in the benefits and drawbacks of different colour spaces. But, for what it's worth, I shoot and process in Adobe 1998 (wider gamut, more to work with), then convert to sRGB for the web. Print files stay in Adobe 1998. If you're just shooting for the web though, you're probably better off shooting in sRGB to start with as you won't be changing so much in the file as you process. I'll admit it's an area I don't know much about though, I bet most people can't tell the difference in the end anyway.

re. editing and processing, for me editing is choosing shots for a piece, processing is working on the files in LR,PS, etc. Most people use them interchangeably though.