khurram1 Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I've been agonizing over trying to decide with going to the new Lightroom CC, after using Canon's DPP raw processor, pretty much since i went digital when the Canon 1D2N and 5D were released.
I did try Lightroom 2 for a couple of months, but struggled with the following lightroom workflow:
1) necessity to use the library structure and always work with the library. I only have a macbook Pro and my workflow consists of creating a file structure on my Macbook Pro, processing the files and than moving the processed files to external portable hard drives. If I ever wanted to rework the files, i transfer them back to my laptop to work on them.
2) Until LR CC, you couldn't merge files anyways, or do some of the other editing in LR itself and had to use PS - and i really found PS overwhelming (only ever had PS CS2), and ended up only using it for creating Pano's of processed JPG or TIFF files.
3) In DPP, when sharpening, I typically just used the sharpening slider to 3 or 4. In LR you need to use the unsharp mask, and while i got Kelby's PS CS2 book, i still struggled with understanding how to use the unsharp mask (i.e. setting radius, amount, when to use different settings, etc). even the DPP 4 now has unsharp mask as well, i don't use that.
4) Similarly with noise reduction - in DPP, i pretty much just go by feel using the sliders in DPP, but really felt uncomfortable in PS and LR.
Since I only used DPP, i really haven't ever merged files of different exposures. Pretty much restricted myself to using ND Grad filters to deal with dynamic range issues. When the 5D3 introduced HDR in DPP, i really never used it, since I found it pretty limiting, where it seemed like any of the edits made to individual files were ignored when you use the HDR merge in DPP. I found this to be a huge challenge, because of the following reasons:
- I've always shot using Auto WB and then set the WB when processing, so using HDR merge in DPP, i'm unable to get the WB i want
- Inablility to change saturation, highlight/shadow, contrast settings afterwards in the DPP merged file
I've watched a few of the LR CC tutorials and am debating whether to try LR, since it looks like you do have the ability to make adjustments to the merged file, before processing it as a JPG or TIFF file and all of the edits are still non-destructive. LR CC also has ability to stitch Panos. Where I'm leary about are the following:
- Necessity to have the file directory setup. As i said, I tend to work on files on my Macbook Pro hard drive, but move files to external portable drives when I need space.
- I'm comfortable with DPP when it comes to using the sliders for sharpening and noise reduction, am clueless using unsharp mask or NR in LR/PS
- I'm comfortable setting saturation, contrast, WB in DPP, unsure about LR
- Overall fear of change - very comfortable with DPP, not comfortable at all in LR (i.e. using curves in LR)
For these reasons, before trying LR CC, i wanted to find out are there others who are doing everything (i.e. merging files) only using DPP and if so, what is there workflow. I'm trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong when I was merging files. That is is my assumption incorrect that you can't make adjustments to WB, Saturation, contrast on individual files before merging, or is there a way to make adjustments to the merged files, like you can in Adobe CC, or am i just missing something.
I'd appreciate any advice and feedback on workflow and how to improve my processing skills!
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