The way Image Processing

A few considerations:

1. 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

2. Metering mode: I set the camera meter to partial mode, so that I can meter off a specific subject when looking thru the viewfinder.

3. 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.

4. 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).

5. 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

Linear Tiff Converted using LPBatch Pro.

2 - Convert the linear tiff file using Fred’s LP Batch Pro. No Saturation, no Sharpening and low contrast settings.

Linear Tiff Converted using a RAW image converter

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.

Adjust the levels.

The image after levels adjustment.
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.

The image after levels adjustment.
The image after Curves adjustment.
5 - Increase Saturation: I use digital velvia pro to enhance saturation. Usually the medium settings is strong enough.

The image after Saturation Enhancement

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.

The image after using Fred’s Shadow Recovery



8 - Sharpen: I use CSPro v 2.0 normal intensity to sharpen the image.

The image after Sharpening using Fred’s CSPro v 2.0



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.

Selective Color Enhancement

The image after selective color enhancement

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.

The image after resizing for web using Fred’s CSPro v 2.0 640x640 action.


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,

Arifin Pane

Balance In Photography

One compositional ‘rule’ (principle) that we’ve not talked much about since starting DPS is ‘balance’.

While it’s a difficult thing to be specific about (it’s not like the Rule of Thirds where you can identify key spots on an image by imagining lines through it) it is a compositional factor worth considering when framing shots.

Perhaps the most effective way of learning about balance is by looking at photos that don’t have it.

We’ve all taken them - shots with strong points of interest on one side of an image and ‘emptiness’ in another area.

I’m not talking about symmetry - images don’t need to be the same on each side - but sometimes images can be improved greatly by having a secondary point of interest counter balancing the main focal point of an image and providing those ‘empty’ spots with a little weight.

Achieving Balance in shots is something that photographers learn over time. The best way to learn it is to scan through some of your older images, looking for those that could be more balanced.

Of course each situation will be different and getting balance in your shots might be achieved by a variety of techniques including:

* cropping (sometimes some post production processing will achieve a lot)
* altering your shooting view point (shooting from higher up or lower down
* zooming (more tightly cropped or wider angles)
* moving an element of your picture (sometimes scenes can be rearranged)

Shadow and Highlight

Shadows set objects into their surroundings. Often a client will ask to me create a shadow where one doesn't currently exist (because an object has been close-cropped onto a blank background) or fix an existing shadow that looks out of place (because an object has been cropped out of its natural environment and placed onto a new background). Or perhaps existing objects in the new scene may affect the way a shadow interacts with its new surroundings. When this happens, it is typical for an object to look out of place in its environment. Retouching can "fix" reality.

In a typical production environment, you might encounter a variety of these types of retouching scenarios: taking an image that was shot in a studio and placing it into a natural outdoor scene; dropping an image into a scene with a different background altogether, which may have been lit differently; cropping an image from an outdoor scene and bringing it indoors. In each case, the color and look of the shadow may have to be adjusted to reflect the changes in the color or feel of the image being brought in and its new surroundings.

Creating realistic shadows from scratch can present a real challenge. First of all, you have to create something that doesn't exist yet, or at least doesn't exist in the form you want it to. The shadow has to be brushed in with typically no point of reference and is totally dependent on the imagination of the person retouching the image. (If you have a limited imagination, this can be a problem, but we'll discuss means of getting around that in this chapter.)

I will typically start my shadow off by first determining where my shadow is going to fall based on the theoretical light source and the way that light would have been striking the object. The source of light will determine where the shadow will be placed, based on the time of day and the mood of the shot. We'll also want to determine the length and softness of the shadow

Tips and Tric From Indonesian Photographer

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