About - CIC interesting Post-Processing Workflow

[Pica]

Hello Everyone,
Even though I have been working a long time with digital post-processing, I am eager to find new best-practices.

Looking at the interesting work flow found here at CiC:

White Balance - temperature and tint adjustment sliders
Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
Noise Reduction - during RAW development or using external software
Lens Corrections - distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberrations
Detail - capture sharpening and local contrast enhancement
Contrast - black point, levels and curves tools
Framing - straighten and crop
Refinements - color adjustments and selective enhancments
Resizing - enlarge for a print or downsize for the web or email
Output Sharpening - customized for your subject matter and print/screen size

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...g-workflow.htm


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(1) What is the difference in the suggested workflow (when working with JPEG and RAW), between:
- Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
- Contrast - black point, levels and curves tools
And what is the background for putting them a part?

(2) It is often suggested that noise reduction should be in the beginning of a post-processing work flow. What is the rationale for putting
- White Balance - temperature and tint adjustment sliders
- Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
before the Noise reduction (e.g. when working with JPEG)?


Thank you for your cooperation!

[bnnrcn]

Hi Pica I don't think CinC's suggested work flow is a strict one. It seems to be a guide for beginners. But Mods might comment on the matter differently

[Mike Buckley]

For a comprehensive review of all best practices including workflow, see this.

[DanK]

Pica,

you don't say what software you are using.

If you are using Lightroom, the order is just one of convenience. The order in which you do things has no effect at all on the final image. With pixel editors, that is not the case.

I think the most useful thing is to understand the reasons why people make certain recommendations, rather than deciding on a fixed recipe. The reason that people suggest doing noise reduction early--assuming you are using software in which the order matters--is to avoid sharpening noise when you apply sharpening. With respect to the various tonality controls, such as curves, exposure, etc.: I think it makes no practical difference.

Dan

[davidedric]

Hi Pica,

I use Lightroom, principally.

I always crop and straighten first mainly because I can't see a point in modifying parts of the image I will discard. In addition, Lightroom's adjustments are "image adaptive", so at least in theory you will get a different outcome for the cropped image.

I also find I need to make adjustments iteratively. For example, in Lightroom, Clarity (local contrast adjustment) and black and white points interact.

Dave

[Codebreaker]

Hi Pica....

We meet again :-)

First thing is to review the images, delete all those that I don't need or like and then Keyword and/or put into Collections. Then process them after that.

I only use Lightroom for processing and like Dave the first thing is to crop and straighten but also apply Lens Correction (which is set to Auto and detects the lens I use but sometimes needs manual adjustment to correct converging verticals etc)

From then on I find I use the controls in LR pretty much from top to bottom as they are shown in the panel on the right hand side. That doesn't mean that each control gets used, only those that I deem necessary to improve the image if required.

For processing in Photoshop (non-raw i.e a jpeg) I think you need more caution as a later adjustment can affect a previous one. However, its been years since I've really done much this way so can't remember the workflow.

Colin

[Manfred M]

First of all, this part of the website was written before Adobe did a major overhaul of the Camera Raw engine (same as the Develop Module in Lightroom) and this included renaming and tweaking the user interface / sliders, so if you are using the more up to date (Photoshop CC 2015) these will have changed.

(1) What is the difference in the suggested workflow (when working with JPEG and RAW), between:
- Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
- Contrast - black point, levels and curves tools
And what is the background for putting them a part?

Exposure compensation - a nice and simple (global) way of adjusting the exposure of the image.

Highlight / Shadow Recovery - Highlight recovery only impacts the lighter tones in the image by lightening or darkening them. As long as these tones are not blown out, details can be brought back using this slider. As an example, a blank looking sky can reveal textures.

Shadow Recovery is similar to highlight recovery, but deals with the darker tones. It brings out shadow details and tones down intense shadows. I often use this functionality, but find that I have to increase the contrast to compensate for some of the side effects of using this control.

black point, levels and curves tools


Black point sets at which point all data to the left of the selected point will be give a value of "0" or pure black. White point (which you do not mention) does the same thing on the right side; anything to the right of where the white point indicator is set is shown as pure white. I use these two settings in virtually 100% of my images to give the shot a wide and crisp looking dynamic range. I also use the gamma point to set the exposure of my images using the levels tool.

All of this can be done with the curves tool as well (curves can be used to manage each channel individually too. I will use curves (which are more difficult to use) when I am facing strange colour casts or contrast areas in an image.

(2) It is often suggested that noise reduction should be in the beginning of a post-processing work flow. What is the rationale for putting
- White Balance - temperature and tint adjustment sliders
- Exposure - exposure compensation, highlight/shadow recovery
before the Noise reduction (e.g. when working with JPEG)?

When working with a raw file, white balance needs to be set before editing in Photoshop (or other pixel based editors) as this value is "baked" into the edit file. I will do most of the global edits in a parametric editor before importing the data into a pixel based editor.

I do 100% of my global import and export sharpening (unusually with the Photoshop Unsharp Mask, sometimes with Smart Sharpen). I usually shoot at or near base ISO so noise is often not an issue for me, but when I do so, I will take care of it before sharpening in order to not sharpen noisy artifacts in the image (which is why I do NO sharpening in Camera RAW (or Lightroom). I generally use Nik Dfine for noise reduction as I find it works better than the tools in Photoshop.

I hope that this helps...

[Pica]

Hello Everyone,
As a friend of business processes in operations, I am also fond of efficient workflows from photo capture to print. I appreciate your participation based on the OP (original post). I will now contemplate your inputs. Thank you. I do appreciate it.

To answer when I started, my two digital photo friends were JPEG and as titled above the pixel based editor (Photoshop Elements 2(!) ) Today my digital friends are four: I capture JPEG and Raw, and like to work with parametric (ACR) and pixel based editors.

If I have some more items I will be back. Thank you all for your cooperation!