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Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 3:03 AM
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Workflow and Software Discussion

It would be interesting to hear about everyone's workflow and software. Some of you have very nicely processed images and it would be great to share some tips and techniques.
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Last edited by flar; Jan 9, 2012 at 3:29 AM.
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  #2  
Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 3:26 AM
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My software is Ufraw (RAW decoding) + Gimp (editing) and I work on Linux (Xubuntu 11.10)


Briefly, my current workflow is:

1. shoot in RAW mode
2. import photos to computer, organized by date
3. use Ufraw's command line batch process to quickly make small jpeg "proofs" from the RAW files
4. choose the photos I want to keep
5. open the RAW files for editing in Gimp using the Ufraw plugin
6. I do exposure, white balance, color profile, and saturation adjustments with Ufraw
7. I do lens correction in Gimp using the Lensfun plugin
8. Other adjustments are also done in Gimp. Commonly used: cropping, curves, unsharp mask, clone tool, scale image, perspective, rotation). I rarely do any complicated stuff with layers and all that
9. Save image as either jpeg for web or tiff for print or other publication



The reason I use Ufraw is because it allows me to get exactly the same colour processing as Nikon software. Ufraw can use the camera color profiles generated by Nikon Capture NX and also reads the other settings from the camera, like white balance. For most images I use my own custom profile based on the Nikon D90's Landscape profile (I used Capture NX to make the profile). I also have the standard profiles for the D90 (portrait, neutral, vivid, etc.) saved on my computer and can easily switch among them in Ufraw.



For panos, I use Hugin. It's amazing, it can take any photos and stitch them together perfectly. It allows all kinds of adjustments and immediately shows them in a preview window.

I also use Enfuse occasionally to get better dynamic range when there is very contrasty lighting.
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  #3  
Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 4:58 AM
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I use Microsoft ICE (Image and Composite Editor) for my panoramas. It's easily the best free panorama software that I've come across.
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Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 6:32 AM
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Nice idea flar. I'd like to hear about some other people's methods. I don't really know very many photographers personally so I don't get exposed to new ideas when it comes to work flow.

My software: Adobe Photoshop CS5 (editing) & Bridge CS5 (RAW viewer and file organizer). I work on windows 7, 4GB ram, quadcore chip @3.4GHz. The system still runs slow when I am editing .RAW files. I bought 4GB of extra ram but it crashes my system when I try and use it so I'm stuck at 4GB for now

My workflow:
  1. Shoot in RAW, almost always stopped down -1/3 to -1 EV
  2. Import images to PC, organized by location and then date
  3. Browse Bridge to select which images to edit
  4. Open image in Adobe Camera Raw (same functionality as Adobe Lightroom)
  5. Adjust light (exposure, brightness, fill light, recovery); geometry(lens correction [chromatic abberation], rotation vertical and/or horizontal perspective); and tone(white balance, vibrance and or saturation) all corrections at this point are applied to the entire image
  6. open adjusted image in Photoshop
  7. at this point many of the adjustments I perform are applied to selected areas of the image. I use Photoshop's pre-built Adjustments + Masks (brightness, levels, curves) or make my own adjustments (unsharp mask, blur, shadow/highlight) from duplicated layers and mask the areas I don't want to be affected. If needed I might dodge and burn and ever so rarely break out the heal or clone tool. Finally I crop the image. I try to edit non-destructively in case I want to go back and make changes. The RAW files can easily be reverted to their original state.
  8. I give the image a title and then save as a .tiff, finally moving on to the next image
  9. Once I get through several images I will batch convert the color profile and save them as jpegs. Then they get uploaded to flickr.

I think I can cut out the tiff stage and just save the images as jpegs. I'm not sure why I am still keeping tiff copies. I don't save my adjustment layers so they are really just non-compressed jpegs.

I don't always make panos...
but when I do I use Photoshop.

I actually use PS's image aligner to make DRI or composite images. When I travel I often don't have a tripod so many of my bracketed shots are handheld. PS does an amazing job aligning the layers.

That's the gist of my process. I know it takes away from the mystique of the photographer to show before and after images but I view post work as an integral part of photography. Here are two recent shots I edited, before and after for each. Keep in mind I shoot underexposed so the highlights don't get blown out. Thus the unprocessed images look really dark. It does take practice to know how dark you can shoot and still recover the shadows in post without revealing too much sensor noise.




Any Given Saturday by Porter Yates, on Flickr




Treasure Trove by Porter Yates, on Flickr
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  #5  
Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 8:52 PM
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I used to always shoot at -1 EV, but now I only dial it down if important highlights are flashing (I always have the viewer on my camera set to show overexposed highlights).
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Old Posted Jan 9, 2012, 9:45 PM
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.

Some difference in the bride photo.
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Old Posted Jan 22, 2012, 5:22 PM
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I use Linux as well, so I edit with open-source solely. Wrote up a bit about my workflow on my neglected blog, read it here:

http://bulliver.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/workflow/

It is a little out of date...I do more processing these days. The basic steps are:

1. exposure adjustments
2. lens correction (lensfun digikam plugin)
3. cropping if necessary
4. local contrast if necessary. This is a digikam filter that will bring detail out of shadowed areas
5. levels adjust
5a. convert to B&W
6. contrast boost
7. unsharp mask

then publish...
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Old Posted Jan 22, 2012, 5:34 PM
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flar, how did you get Capture NX to run on Linux to make that colour profile?
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Old Posted Jan 22, 2012, 7:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulliver View Post
flar, how did you get Capture NX to run on Linux to make that colour profile?
I installed Windows 7 in vmware one day because I wanted check it out. While I had it, I tested out trial versions of some photo software, including Lightroom, Capture One, DXO and the Nikon software. I didn't try running Capture NX in wine, so I don't know if that's a possibility.

The profiles are pretty much essential. I found I could never get satisfactory colour on RAW files without the profiles created by Nikon.
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Old Posted Jan 22, 2012, 7:54 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulliver View Post
I use Linux as well, so I edit with open-source solely. Wrote up a bit about my workflow on my neglected blog, read it here:

http://bulliver.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/workflow/

It is a little out of date...I do more processing these days. The basic steps are:

1. exposure adjustments
2. lens correction (lensfun digikam plugin)
3. cropping if necessary
4. local contrast if necessary. This is a digikam filter that will bring detail out of shadowed areas
5. levels adjust
5a. convert to B&W
6. contrast boost
7. unsharp mask

then publish...
I'm thinking about using Digikam to sort and organize. I like being able to rate the photos with stars.

Have you tried Darktable? It looks very promising but there are a couple small things I don't like about it.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2012, 2:16 AM
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I see...No chance of me getting vmware or windows. A few attempts with wine in the past did not go well....

Are the profiles plain text files? A binary?

I wonder...my buddy shoots with a D90 and has Capture NX installed on his windows rig...I wonder if we could make the profiles and put them on a thumb drive for me to use on my comp?

Never tried Darktable.

I am pretty happy with digikam, for both organization, and it's quite impressive editing features. I prefer it to using gimp. Only use gimp if cloning etc is required.
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Old Posted Jan 23, 2012, 4:13 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bulliver View Post
I see...No chance of me getting vmware or windows. A few attempts with wine in the past did not go well....

Are the profiles plain text files? A binary?

I wonder...my buddy shoots with a D90 and has Capture NX installed on his windows rig...I wonder if we could make the profiles and put them on a thumb drive for me to use on my comp?

Never tried Darktable.

I am pretty happy with digikam, for both organization, and it's quite impressive editing features. I prefer it to using gimp. Only use gimp if cloning etc is required.
They are .icm files so they are binary, basically standard colour profiles like you'd get with a monitor calibration, printers, etc. I don't know where these files stand in regards to free software.

If you can run Capture NX on your buddy's computer, I highly recommend doing your own custom profiles. You can adjust the contrast and saturation how you like it and have it automatically applied to all your RAW images. Capture NX stores the profiles in a temporary folder while you work on an image, you just have to copy that icm file to a thumb drive and you can start using it.

This blog explains how it's done: http://blog.crushedredpepper.com/nikon/raw.html
I'm sure the basic D90 profiles (Standard, Neutral, Landscape, Portrait, Vivid) are downloadable on the net somewhere.
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  #13  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 11:41 PM
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Some info about color profiles (as well as a few downloads) can be found here: http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Colors.html

For some reason the Nikon profiles don't seem to work properly in Digikam and Rawtherapee, but they work fine in Ufraw and Darktable. Maybe there's another setting that needs to be changed.
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  #14  
Old Posted Jan 26, 2012, 11:45 PM
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Thanks for the info...I will look into it.
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