A
few considerations:
- Exposure
Mode:
Mostly shoot in manual exposure mode; I like the
feel of total control over what I am shooting.
I have a couple of books from John Shaw where
he mentions about exposure compensation by subject
color. So I just follow what is written in the
book underexposing for subjects darker than the
gray card and over exposing for subjects that
are brighter than the gray card
- Metering
mode:
I set the camera meter to partial mode, so that
I can meter off a specific subject when looking
thru the viewfinder.
- Focus
Mode:
I focus on the subject in the fore ground using
manual or auto focus and then switch to manual
focus, recompose the shot and take it. When I
do this I raise my f-stop to anything from f11-f16
depending on the distance of the subject and the
foreground and the focal length I am shooting
at. This gives me the DOF that I require to shoot
landscapes.
- Quality:
I almost always shoot in RAW mode, this gives
me the ability to manipulate my images with out
loosing any quality. Using RAW mode gives me images
which are more pleasing to my eye(colors, saturation
etc).
- Saturation,
Contrast, Sharpness:
I set the other in camera parameters to normal.
How
I process my images:
1 - Convert to Linear Tiff Using any of the following
programs canon’s RAW image converter. BreezeBrowser
or YarcPlus etc
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 Linear
Tiff Converted using LPBatch Pro.
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2
- Convert the linear tiff file using Fred’s LP Batch
Pro. No Saturation, no Sharpening and low contrast
settings.
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Linear
Tiff Converted using a RAW image converter
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3-
Adjust Levels: Go to Image-> Adjustments-> Levels.
You should the histogram of the image. Now adjust
the left and right sliders to eliminate the empty
space on either sides. You can move the middle slider
to adjust the brightness of the image.
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Adjust
the levels.
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The
image after levels adjustment.
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4
- Adjust curves: Go to Image->Adjustments->Curves.
Set three control points as show below and adjust
the curves to increase contrast and brightness as
show below. Play around with the three points until
the image looks right.
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The
image after levels adjustment.
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The
image after Curves adjustment.
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5
- Increase Saturation: I use digital velvia pro to
enhance saturation. Usually the medium settings is
strong enough.
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The
image after Saturation Enhancement
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6
- Remove Color Cast: We can use curves again and play
around with different colors and the center control
point to White Balance the image. I did not have to
do anything for this since it looks good.
7 - Shadow Recovery: I use Fred’s Shadow Recovery
action to increase the details in the shadows. I mostly
use Medium settings. At this point the image is converted
from 16 bit to 8bit. We do most of the color, saturation
and contrast enhancements in 16-bit mode. The aim
is to keep the image in 16-bit mode as long as possible
while enhancing it.
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The
image after using Fred’s Shadow Recovery
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8
- Sharpen: I use CSPro v 2.0 normal intensity to sharpen
the image.
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The
image after Sharpening using Fred’s CSPro v
2.0
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9
- Selective color enhancement : Go to Image-> Adjustments
-> Selective color and adjust the black levels
of Cyan, White and black. I usually add 20 to Cyan
and White. This gives the clouds a darker look.
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Selective
Color Enhancement
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The
image after selective color enhancement
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10
- Convert to SRGB Color space by using Freds CSPro
2.0’s 640x640 resizing action. Once I convert it to
sRGB color space for web viewing I see the exact same
image on the web browser as I was seeing in Photoshop.
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The
image after resizing for web using Fred’s CSPro
v 2.0 640x640 action.
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I
tend to under expose a bit so that I don’t blow out
the highlights.
I
have been asked numerous times as to how I process
my images. So thought of keeping in writing what works
for me. This is my workflow as of today but might
change anytime. Hope that helps.
Thanks
for taking the time to read, hope it is of some help.
Regards,
Ravi
Shankar Nori
