Hendrik
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 p.1 #6 · Guidelines - last edit 23 april | |
Editing
Did you bought all Plug-ins and actions from Fred? Well, if not …do it now! OK, I agree, you don’t need everything, but take a good look at what you do need. The quality is great, especially if you take the price into account. An action is nothing more then an automated series of steps. If you’re a Photoshop wizard, you can do this yourself; otherwise I highly recommend his actions. Save yourself a lot of time.
A long time ago, I did a test here with interpolation tools Genuine Fractals PrintPro3, S-Spline Pro (now called PhotoZoom Pro) and Fred’s SI Pro. Up to 200% there were no differences in print on an Epson 2100. Most expensive tools are for pixel measurebators with too much money. I would first try the cheaper solutions before buying expensive tools, unless of course there is only one king of the hill.
Adobe Photoshop is the professional standard in desktop digital imaging. There are other good editors, but they lack some of the nice features. Almost all good instruction books or other useful sources aim at the PS user. As if nothing else exists. If you can, consider this piece of software. I know it’s expensive, but so is your camera. Don’t panic, even if you don’t use PS, you can still do an astonishing amount of editing with the other editors.
Before you start, you should take a look at your working color space. You should match your working color space with the color space of your image. When you selected sRGB on your camera or RAW converter, then sRGB is your PS working space. Set your Color Management Policies to ask by profile mismatches or missing profiles (see picture).
Never convert images (one color space to another), unless you need to work with different images captured in different color spaces on the same project.
Never convert to a smaller color space, like sRGB, unless you need a smaller gamut (like posting on the Internet). Save your image before conversion and use the largest color space for your archive.
When you load an image into PS and it asks to convert it to the "working color space" or "leave it as is", choose “leave it as is”. Every conversion will degrade the image a bit. Change your working space to match your images, if the message irritates you
When the image doesn’t contain a profile, you should assign the correct profile. When you know you shoot sRGB, assign the sRGB profile. When you assign the wrong profile, the numerical color data will be interpreted wrongly and this will lead to color shifts. Therefore, don’t assign a profile if you don’t know it. Leave it un-color-managed.
Don’t do any corrections on color or tone on an un-calibrated monitor. Same is true for soft-proofing. You can’t trust what you’re seeing. Maybe you’re changing the image, but it’s the monitor at fault.
The more you learn, the more confident you will work with your images. Controlling Color is one aspect. For example when you convert to a profile, the out-of-gamut colors need to be taken care of. There are four methods of handling out-of-gamut colors and are called rendering intents; the two most relevant are Perceptual intent and Relative Colorimetric intent. Perceptual intent is the best choice when there are significant out-of-gamut colors, because it preserves the overall color relationships. Relative Colorimetric is often a better choice for images that don’t contain significant out-of-color colors, because it preserves more of the original colors. Well, to be honest, I still don’t know what to select when I convert my images. When are colors significant out-of-gamut? I simply use the default (Perceptual) setting, and expect (hope) differences are not so dramatic. Of course the not so lazy want to learn all aspects of controlling color…
You can read a more detailed explanation in ‘Real World Adobe Photoshop CS’ by David Blatner, Bruce Fraser. A must buy when you work with PS CS.
The workflow (subsequent order):
- ‘Develop’ your image with a RAW image converter. All big corrections are done with the RAW converter, using the RAW data. What you want to do in the RAW converter and what part with Photoshop or other specialized tool, is up to you. There is no ‘golden standard’ or one good workflow. Normally you choose your working color space, correct the white balance and do some exposure compensation. It’s important to learn all settings, strengths and weaknesses of your converter. Normally you ‘develop’ your image to a 16-bit lossless TIFF format. If you can, avoid the lossy JPEG format or 8-bit mode.
When you want to edit images saved in JPEG format, first convert them to a lossless format like TIFF or PSD (Photoshop file). JPEGs use a compression method that sacrifices image information to reduce the file size. Every time you save an image as a JPEG, some of the original image data will be lost even if you use the Fine setting.
- Optional Noise reduction. You can use different tools, like the RAW converter, Fred’s plug-ins or other specialized software like Noise Ninja or Neat Image.
- Optional low sharpening early in the image-editing process to restore any sharpness that was lost in the capture process. You can use PS, Fred’s plug-in, or other specialized tool.
- Color-correction, curves adjustment, etc. Use high-bit images if you want to avoid, posterization or banding (the combing effect in histograms).
- Retouching
- Save your work before you customize your image to his final destination. Preferably use a 16-bit lossless format and attach the icc-profile.
- Any last corrections you encounter after your conversion to another color space (Soft Proofing)
- Upsizing/downsizing with Fred’s Plug-ins, or use another specialized tool
- Final sharpening. Image already sized to final output resolution, and is now getting tailored to a specific type of output process
- Convert to final color space (e.g. sRGB for web images)
- Convert to 8-bit
- Save your final tailored image with icc-profile if you want
You should learn Non-Destructive Photoshop techniques. You have succeeded when you can say: “No pixels were harmed during the creation of this photograph.” [from Kevin Ames, The Art of Photographing Women]
Edited by Hendrik on Apr 30, 2005 at 04:37 PM GMT
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Sam, you notice the word ‘real’ is put between quotation marks? 