Rodolfo Paiz
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 p.1 #3 · What Is Your D200 NEF Post Processing in CS2 / CS3? | |
You'll notice over time that the controls and sliders in ACR are laid out pretty logically by process, so that you generally run through them top-to-bottom on each tab, then left-to-right along the tabs. Modify what you need, leave the rest alone. Overall, then, when I open the file in ACR, I typically run through this process:
1. Correct the white balance as necessary.
2. Crop as desired.
3. Move exposure slider to get highlights and light tones where I want them, and get a good overall exposure. (Use the highlight recovery slider next to it to avoid blowing things out as necessary, but use it with moderation.)
4. Move blacks slider to get the darks and blacks where I want them. True blacks should look black. (Again, use the "fill light" slider with moderation to keep some detail where desired.)
Note that steps 3-4 basically represent a levels adjustment, done in RAW.
5. Use brightness and contrast to tweak the balance of the shot. Increasing brightness will shift the "center of gravity" of the histogram to the right, and increasing contrast will widen the histogram and push things away from the middle towards the sides. Decreasing is obvious, but I rarely find myself needing to decrease either brightness or contrast.
6. Lightly adjust clarity, vibrance, and saturation to fine-tune the image. Use saturation with restraint... try vibrance first. Use both in moderation, it's easy to go overboard.
7. Since I'm usually trying for a look that's as close to reality as possible, I rarely make changes to the hues and colors. But that, and curves, would be the logical next steps.
8. Go to the sharpening tab, and zoom to 100%. This annoys the stuffing out of me, but you can't see the effects of ACR capture sharpening otherwise. Then sharpen this way:
___8a. Hold down Alt, click and drag on the scrubby handle for Masking. Slide until you are doing only the bare minimum of necessary sharpening to avoid having important edges be soft. Remember that you can only mask this sharpening with this one slider, so your control is not as fine-grained as it'll be later in PS post. Use restraint.
___8b. Again hold down Alt, click-drag the scrubby for Detail until what you see are the only things that you want to have sharpened.
___8c. Play with Amount and Radius to get the look you want. If in doubt, sharpen less rather than more.
Other than a quick correction for vignetting on a few lenses, or a defringing adjustment where needed for backlit shots, that's pretty much it. Hit "Open Image" and go to it.
I do suggest that you set your camera to Adobe RGB, and set ACR to Adobe RGB at 16 bits as well. You can always throw colors away later, but you can't add any in that are already gone, so keep the bits as long as possible.
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