Workflow

[Xkeith]

I notice that in your advised workflow sequence, straightening and cropping appear well down the list. Does this not mean that the previous six steps will involve operations being performed on parts of the image which may then be removrd by cropping? It seems more logical to straighten/crop first so that you only work on the pixels which appear in the final image.

[FrankMi]

Some folks prefer to straighten and crop first and some prefer last. I've tried it both ways and prefer waiting as how I see the image sometimes changes for me and I have extra room for a different crop that way.

[Photon Hacker]

Straightening is usually a lossy operation for bitmaps. If the editing involves selection of shapes along edges (I.e: when blurring background or ) then it can be more convenient to perform these with the unaltered edges rather than the possibly slightly blurred ones due to the straightening if it was performed first.

[Geoff F]

Shooting Raw means that I regard straightening and cropping as one of the first stages of conversion. But sometimes I have a bit of a rethink and do a final crop or crop to fit a printing size.

I tend to regard these activities as being best down at the Raw stage.

[Donald]

Given that I shoot the picture with the crop in mind I know what I don't want and do the crop right at the start of the RAW workflow. But, if you're not certain about the crop you want then it may well be better to leave until you're through the workflow, so that you can determine the best crop for your, now, partly processed image. The fact that you're then losing some parts is no big deal.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Keith,

Are you referring to this tutorial?
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...g-workflow.htm

If so, as others here do, I would vary that a bit myself - it all depends on the image and what you need to do to it.

I can see definite reasons why it must be done after lens corrections and it usually helps with Noise Reduction to have more image to sample from when using Neat Image, etc. in fact the same may be true for cloning.

White Balance and Exposure are usually done first, but personally I'd rotate (if necessary) and crop before applying LCE and other stuff that uses a histogram, as it then only shows what's in the final picture, not the highlight on edge of frame you intend to crop off which could result in a white point needing a further change later on.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ...

[Colin Southern]

I usually crop studio work in ACR so I can get a better appreciation for the (zoomed) image detail, and with no distracting stands / backdrop edges in the drame.

I usually crop landscape in CS5 so that I can play more with the aspect ratio (I usually manipulate this in PS).

Not sure which camp this puts me it!