Digital Workflow
Most pictures taken with the current crop of DSLR cameras
can be improved by varying extents with post-processing work done on a computer.
Mundane pictures can be given the extra POP needed to become exceptional.
Exceptional pictures can be tweaked to perfection.
To take advantage of this fact, you must create your own digital workflow.
The insect that chose to fly past your subject as the shutter opened can be removed.
The shot that didn't give you time to do anything but press the shutter
release can have its exposure corrected.
Blemishes can be removed from your loved ones (or from those paying you).
The shot taken with improper white balance set can be adjusted to perfection.
OK - close to perfection. Sometimes I'm never satisfied.
Even though Canon Digital SLR Cameras produce exceptional images,
some improvements can still be made in the post-processing digital workflow.
Following are the typical steps I take in my digital workflow.
Keep in mind that the following list of steps is not conclusive -
MANY other steps become involved when necessary.
The obvious first step to post-processing is to get the pictures onto the computer hard drive.
I am using a free program called Digital Image Mover (DIM)
written by Alan Light for this purpose.
DIM is very ease to use and easy to setup.
DIM automatically copies the .CR2 files (and any JPEGs as well) from any device mounted to the computer as a drive letter.
This includes most CompactFlash Card Readers including the fast
Lexar CompactFlash PC CardBus Adapter I use in my notebook.
Many cameras can be directly attached to a computer this way as well.
Image files are copied to a designated location on the computer's hard drive.
During the process, DIM can rename the files using values in the EXIF data of the picture file.
I rename the files to a date/time code in the format of yyyy-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss".
This name format allows easy sorting of pictures chronologically.
This format is especially nice when using more than one camera
(as long as the time is precisely set on both).
Canon's Digital Photo Pro (DPP - included with current
Canon Digital SLR's)
is my current choice for RAW conversion software.
I am never completely sure of this decision,
but I generally get better RAW conversion results than with
Adobe's Photoshop CS
Camera Raw processing.
I shoot in Canon's RAW/.CR2 format (with no JPEG) 99 percent of the time.
I generally shoot many more pictures than I need, so my first DPP task is to selectively delete pictures.
I try to delete liberally.
If a picture is blurred or out of focus, it gets deleted.
If the exposure is off by more than a small amount, good-bye.
If I have a couple of similar shots, only the best is/are saved.
For this task, I generally select all similar shots and open them in DPP's Edit Mode for comparison.
I give a check mark 3 (ALT-3) to the ones I want to delete and remove them from Edit Mode Selection (ALT-Delete).
I also use the DPP Quick View for this task.
After narrowing the selection down to just the keepers,
I go back to the main window, select all checked images (CTRL-ALT-3) and delete them (Delete).
DPP makes use of the Windows Recycle Bin (older Canon RAW conversion programs did not).
You get a second chance if you delete something you really wanted.
At this point in my processing, I make sure I am using a
calibrated external monitor
attached to my laptop.
I have not found a laptop with a display that is acceptable to me for post processing work.
The colors and contrast are just not good enough (to me at least).
Why is a
calibrated monitor
important?
Monitors do not universally display colors correctly.
You can go to great lengths to get your colors and exposures exactly right on your monitor,
but your picture may look terrible on a different monitor - or when printed.
If you are using a monitor calibrated to a standard, you are not wasting your time.
Reds will be red, greens will be green ...
The best way to calibrate a monitor is with a hardware calibration device such as the
Eye-One Display from GretagMacbeth.
Software-only solutions such as Adobe Gamma (comes with Photoshop) can get you close.
Be sure to instruct Digital Photo Pro to use your custom monitor profile in the
preferences settings (CTRL-K).
I usually attempt to get near-exact white balance out of the camera.
Canon's latest Digital SLRs
have very good auto white balance, but I often use a specific white balance
setting (such a "Fluorescent") or even better - a custom white balance
(using a Gray Card)
or a Kelvin setting (estimate the color temperature, then fine tune -
then remember the temperature value for next time at that location).
At this point in my digital workflow, I tweak any white balance settings that need it.
My white balance setting method varies based on the picture(s).
Often I will (from within DPP's Main Window) select all of the shots
taken under similar lighting conditions and adjust their white balance settings as a group.
If I have a Gray Card shot that I did not use
for a custom white balance setting in-camera (possibly shot later)
or if something in one of the pictures has neutral color (white, black or a shade of gray),
I will use the Click (RAW) button/feature.
Simply click the Click (RAW) button, then click the neutral color in one of the pictures.
If don't like the results the first time, I will try again until I'm satisfied.
Click the Click (RAW) button again to turn off the tool.
I will often open one of the pictures in DPP's Edit Mode to insure that I'm satisfied.
The other white balance method I like to use is the K setting.
I typically open one of the pictures in DPP's Edit Mode, select "Color Temp."
and drag the Kelvin temperature slider back and forth until colors are close to correct.
Then I'll use the mouse wheel to dial in the exact setting.
Back at the Main Window, I'll select all similarly lighted pictures and apply the
previously determined Kelvin temperature to them as well.
Use the White Balance button for this task.
My next task is to adjust exposures.
I attempt to get exposures near exact in-camera
or very slightly overexposed (long as the highlights are not blown).
Keep in mind that blown highlight details
(overexposed - straight vertical line on the right side of the histogram)
are nearly impossible to recover.
If you underexpose your shot, noise (incorrectly colored pixels)
is increased during the exposure adjustment.
This noise is nearly un-noticeable for small adjustments at ISO 100,
but it becomes much more of an issue if you are making heavy exposure adjustments
to high ISO images.
Get the exposure right on the shot.
Post-processing .CR2 files let you dial in exposures to perfection.
I will often make coarse exposure adjustments in DPP's Main Window
using the Brightness (RAW) button and fine tune them individually in DPP's Edit Window.
While fine tuning the individual pictures, I often apply other tweaks as well.
I may tweak any of the settings available in DPP Edit Mode including
saturation, contrast, white balance tuning, curves, cropping ...
The before/after comparison view is often helpful for evaluating changes made at this point.
Now, go back to the DPP Main Window, select all pictures (CTRL-A) and
select add-recipe-and-save (CTRL-s) if you have not been doing so all along.
At this point in my process, I physically (electronically?) separate (drag and drop)
the pictures into two category folders -
finished (to JPEG) and not-finished (to TIFF).
Since JPEG is a lossy-compression image format,
opening a JPEG file, editing it and re-saving it as a
JPEG results in a second generation of data loss.
The finished/JPEG category is for those shots I do not want to further process.
I simply batch process these shots into JPEG files of a
quality/compression level (usually the highest quality setting), sharpness (usually 1)
and pixel dimension resize (depends on what I intend to do with the finished picture) I desire.
These pictures are finished.
I generally delete these RAW files at this point.
The not-finished/TIFF category is for shots I want to take to the next level of optimization
(or for those that have problems needing more attention).
I convert these pictures into 16-bit TIFF files for further processing in Photoshop CS.
I usually batch process these pictures using a sharpness setting of 1.
I next open Adobe Photoshop
to process the 16-bit TIFF files resulting from the DPP conversion.
I typically open a few at a time depending on their file size.
Since a 16.6 megapixel file converted into a 16-bit TIFF file is about 95 MB in size,
the computing requirements are rather high.
My first Photoshop task is to crop/straighten
the picture if necessary.
I do it first because cropping reduces the file size, and makes any further processing perform faster.
In addition, cropping and rotating prevent the History Brush from
being used to get back to any prior state.
That said, I do not crop or rotate most of my pictures.
Utilizing a zoom lens
for most of my pictures makes cropping less necessary for me -
I crop before the shot (using the zoom lens), leaving full resolution for the final image.
Getting rotation right on the shot eliminates this step as well.
A curves or levels adjustment is generally my next step -
adjusting the contrast/saturation/exposure in the process.
I can frequently improve a picture with some simple levels adjustments.
I sometimes fine tune color balance using the color balance adjustment dialog.
The next step is touching up the shot itself.
Kids invariably have a scratch or something on their face -
the healing brush or clone tools work well for this.
Now is the time to clone out any distractions you don't want.
Take away the black bird that flew into the background of your outdoor senior portrait.
Remove toys left on the carpet or other distractions.
I occasionally adjust the saturation at this point.
I (infrequently) darken (Burn Tool) or lighten (Dodge Tool) areas that need it.
If I am going to do more advanced manipulation of the picture,
now is the point in the process I employ it.
Examples include softening skin, using layer masks, digital split neutral density filter ...
Sharpening is the last Photoshop
procedure I use before saving the final version of the picture.
I analyze each picture on a case-by-case basis and only sharpen those pictures
that really need it (I already added some sharpening in DPP).
If I sharpen a picture, I sharpen the least amount possible to get the look I want.
My sharpening currently/generally utilizes Adobe Photoshop Smart Sharpen.
Many of the best Canon L Series Lenses
can produce tack sharp pictures out of the camera.
Too much sharpening actually degrades the quality of the picture
(many people oversharpen their pictures.
I generally use a Photoshop
High Pass sharpening routine for this task.
If I find a picture that is too soft (focus or motion blur problem) for sharpening to fix,
I reduce the overall image size until it will sharpen reasonably well,
then run the High Pass sharpening routine on it.
Sharpening can make a huge difference in a reduced size picture.
A picture sized for the web is a good example.
Pictures I resize to 500px on the longest dimension (for the web)
usually respond very well to sharpening.
At this point, I use Photoshop's
Save For Web function to create a 95-Quality JPEG file.
Any finished pictures that are not up to my satisfaction get run
through the entire process once more.
I then delete the 16-bit TIFF files as 95 MB files fill up a hard drive in a hurry.
The 16 bit TIFF files output by Canon's Digital Photo Pro do not contain
the original EXIF data.
I find this information very valuable for educational purposes
and therefore I am not satisfied to lose it.
I wrote a software program that copies EXIF information
from a JPEG file to another JPEG file.
Of course, I must make another conversion in DPP -
directly to JPEG this time to get the EXIF data included.
I copy the EXIF information from the DPP JPEG files to the PS JPEG files.
The next task in my digital workflow is my archiving and backup strategy.
Digital pictures can last forever - and they can also be lost in an instant!
Hard drives fail, CD-Rs and DVDs fail, equipment gets stolen, fires happen ...
My current backup strategy may be overkill, but here it is:
A copy of the finished JPEG files get stored on my laptop hard drive (not all fit here).
I have easy access to my most-recent pictures directly from the laptop.
Additional copies of the JPEG files get stored on each of the two
Maxtor 300GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drives
attached to my laptop in my office.
Additional copies of the JPEG files get stored two additional external hard drives at home.
Three complete sets are burned onto CD-Rs of at least two different major name brand media
and stored in three different locations in Case Logic CD Binders.
Side note: I include a small program on each of the CD-Rs that will automatically
produce a slide show when the CD is inserted into a drive.
I admit, eight copies is overkill, but you must make at least 2 copies
and store them in different locations.
My .CR2 files are reviewed once more from Canon's Digital Photo Pro.
Any pictures that I don't think I would ever re-process are deleted.
I typically purge about 75% of the files.
I then copy remaining .CR2 files to a set of CD-Rs
and to each of my external drives.
The CD-R copy is stored off-site.
I store my picture files in a \Pictures\yyyy\yyyy-mm\ folder structure on my hard drives.
I find it reasonably easy to locate any picture I want this way.
It is also fun to see what pictures I took in a particular month of a prior year -
such as the current month.
There is a great deal of flexibility in a digital workflow -
hopefully you were able to glean some useful tips for creating your own digital workflow.
