I made a mistake

[Shelley]

I did a reasonable size photoshoot of graduation photos - unfortunately cannot show, due to being students.

I set my ppi to 300 in raw and then in cs5 I resized to 8x10 before editing - my mistake, kick myself - is that the resolution for some reason changed to some weird number like - 400, 500 etc. which I did not notice. I edited etc., changed background.

What should I have set in cs5 to stop this happening? I should not have to change to 300 ppi each time, should I when resizing?


If I change to 300 - am I safe to then go ahead and print. Its probably a dumb question - but its a paid shoot. Just checking my quality will still be okay.

[ameerat42]

Shelley. What am I missing. Did you (somehow managed to) change the raw file?

Did you not save a tiff or jpeg to use for printing?

In CS5, did you set "Resample Image"? If so, you will have changed the image size (I don't mean print size).

[camerasnoop]

Should make absolutely no difference what you set the dpi to when converting from RAW. It will only matter what the actual dimensions are in pixels. Are you trying to size them to 8x10 inches, or just save them to the 4:5 ratio? In ACR you can use the crop tool set to 4:5 ratio and do this for a batch using the Synchronize option. Be careful though as you'd need to have shot wide enough in the first place to accommodate this. I'd then do the edits and finish off by using File>>Automate>>Fit Image and set the pixel size to 3000 (ten inches at 300 dpi). That will do both horizontals and verticals correctly.

Tell us more.

[farmmax]

If you want images that end up 8" X 10" at 300 ppi, probably the safest and fastest option is to go to the crop tool, and set it up in the options tool bar to crop at 8" X 10" at 300 ppi. Then just crop the photo where you want to, and the resulting image will be automatically resized to those settings.

You may then save that setting as a preset, which you can then access on a dropdown menu on the far left hand side of the options bar.

Just make sure the original image size is bigger than the size you are cropping to, or you may get quality issues.

If you have lots of images to do, you could create an action to resize, and then run a batch process using the action, and it will do a hundred images very quickly without you having to touch them.

If you resized your images to 8" X 10", printing them at resolutions other than 300 should not be an issue, so I probably wouldn't change them. So long as the width : height ratio fits the paper you or the printer want to use. The ppi will only be problem if it is too low. The fact that it is 400 or more should produce excellent prints. Just check with your printer if you are not sure.

My printing sometimes gets sent off with a strange ppi, but it is unlikely I would notice in the finished product.

[Shelley]

Hey, thanks for all the replies. Haven't been able to check this thread at work today as I forgot my iPad - restricted access via the network.

What I did was:

Set the the ppi to 300 in raw, converted to jpeg and opened in CS5. I then cropped 8x10 in (getting printed at RGB - they request 300 ppi.

I just realised I did the dumbest thing, I reduced the pixels size after the crop, thinking I was reducing the size of the file - would it affect the crop. Jeez, I am not thinking straight. I am just going hit my head on the wall for minute.

[camerasnoop]

I just realised I did the dumbest thing, I reduced the pixels size after the crop, thinking I was reducing the size of the file - would it affect the crop. Jeez, I am not thinking straight. I am just going hit my head on the wall for minute.

Geez, now you've lost me.

What are pixel dimensions of the finished product? They should be 3000 by 2400 for a 10x8 at 300dpi. That's all you need to worry about.

[Shelley]

Thanks. Sorry just on overload with this particular photoshoot, it got bigger than I thought. I need to streamline my workflow and be more time efficient.

I will use those dimensions wobbles and then when I have finished, I will revisit my cropping method. Thanks for reading my mumbo jumbo and sorry.



Sorry that I made no sense wobbles, appreciate the feedback as there are some good points, which I will put into practise.

[camerasnoop]

No problem Kelly.

[Shelley]

I am so sorry, I can't stop laughing (where did I get wobbles from, lol). I have been up late after work doing this processing and getting up at 5am, I just cannot sleep in (birding hours). I am going back into my little hole and stick with birding.

[camerasnoop]

Well more of me wobbles than I'd like.

Are you using Bridge to interface with CS5? If you do, then there are lots of options available to you to help with your workflow. I usually use Bridge and ACR to create recipes for batch processing either via an action or via Image Processor. Once you've put your crop in at the desired aspect ratio, the batch process will apply that without resampling. You can then use the "Fit Image" command to set the longest pixel dimension. It's easy as.... Putting the crop into the action stuffs up the different orientation, and you don't want to run the action twice. Theoretically, you could do the resize in ACR too, but that is a bit more fiddly.

If you want more detailed explanation, PM me.

[Shelley]

Yes, I am using cs5 with Bridge interface - I will definately work on refining this. I am familiar with doing my own actions, but not savvy doing batch processing. You have been so helpful camerasnoop. Thank you.

[camerasnoop]

Well if you shoot school formals using backdrops and studio strobes, you get a set of images that share pretty much the exact same settings, especially if you also use a set WB. If you also frame them identically, then you should be able to edit and process them identically. I have some samples here which whilst they don't have identical framing, do exhibit identical settings.

Untitled-1.jpg

Image #1 - You'll see that I have one thousand images loaded in ACR from Adobe Bridge. When I select all, if the settings differ in any way, they won't show a value. You'll see these all show values. That pretty much means I can edit them all at once if I choose. With all of them selected, I can move a slider and it will do that adjustment for every photo selected in one go. I would do this for a tone curve, or brightness, or vignette or something like that. I usually don't do this for a crop because the images don't all have the same framing or content, but if they did, I could do that too.

Now before someone jumps in and says "Lightroom can do all that". I know that, but this is about using Bridge and Photoshop CS5 thanks. That is the software that Shelley is using.

So, to get to your cropping requirements:

Untitled-6.jpg

Image #2 - You can use the crop tool in ACR a couple of ways. You could simply choose the 4:5 option which will give you that particular aspect ratio without worrying about image dimensions, OR you can put the dimensions into a custom crop. Note though that when you do this, the settings at the bottom of the dialogue box change and the image will be output from ACR at exactly those pixel dimensions. You'll get 8x10 images using the settings I have entered here based on 300dpi printing. So...you get a crop and resize as part of the conversion process using the custom crop. You don't need to set up two custom crops to cope with verticals or horizontals either. ACR will automatically rotate the crop if you use it as part of a batch process.

Now when you've done all your desired changes in ACR for all of the images, what do you do next?

Well you can simply click on done and save all those recipes into the XMP files, or you can go to the bottom left side of the ACR dialogue box and select "Save Image".

Untitled-3.jpg

Image #3 - You'll get a dialogue box that shows as above. Choose your options and click "Save". You won't even have to open Photoshop for this option.

If you chose to simply save the recipes in the previous step, then you can process the images in two ways - via the Image Processor, or via a Photoshop Action run as a batch.

In CS5, you can run an action at the same time as the Image Processor by including it in the dialogue box. If you add a watermark for instance, you can do it using this method. If you have a set finishing touch that you apply to your images, then you can run that. See below.

Untitled-5.jpg

Image #4 - Actions that have no "Open" or "Save" commands work best via Image Processor. From what you described above Shelley, you processed and resized your RAW images to JPEG before doing selective editing on them. This method would work for you. You could save them all as PSD files and still have 16-bit editing available until you finally saved them as 8-bit JPEG images. You'd also put the image dimensions in here if you hadn't already set them at the ACR stage. Put 3000 in BOTH places and check the "Resize to Fit" box.

Finally, you could run them all as part of a Batch Command. I won't paste an image of that here as it is pretty straight forward, and most people already know how to do that.

Having large numbers of images from a school formal shoot need not turn into a large time consuming job. All the tools you need are already within Photoshop CS5 (and its free add-on Bridge CS5). There is absolutely no need to buy Lightroom as well as CS5 unless you want the DAM modules. Of course I might have a one-eyed view of that.

The time to try all this stuff is not when you have done the job and need to process the images quickly. The time is before that when you have plenty of time. People seem to build their workflow to suit the way they work. that is logical, but sometimes it can help to modify the way you work to suit your workflow too. Shooting wide, using manual and identical exposure settings can make it much easier at the production end of the process.

I'm sure there are lots of people here who have great workflows for doing this stuff. I am limited a little in what I do with this stuff because I do it as part of a job with other photographers. It is not my job primarily. I just help out as they do for me when I get a job that requires more than one photographer at a time.

Are you still awake?

[Shelley]

Thank you so much - i really appreciate your time in putting this together. It is most helpful. I do shoots, but usually just small ones. Probably not big compared to other schools, but for me it was as it was two class sizes, plus family shots. Its hard work and you have to work fast when taking shots, as there is a line. I took numbers beforehand, but ended up with more on the day.

I sort of picked up this shoot on a regular basis, because I know the students really well and involved in photography with the senior students throughout the year.

Yeah, got some quality sleep.....

[Shelley]

Just to let you know, got my prints back today and I am very pleased. Photos printed with Rgb. First mum to pick up got very emotional when seeing the photo of her boy graduating and promptly ordered more, another mum did the same and wants me to do a photoshoot. No one else picked up yet as my date for pick up is 1 December.

So thank you so much for the help and camera snoop for the tut.