Lightroom Rocks!

ORIGINAL IMAGE

Last weekend at the Waco Fly-in I took about 180 photos. Many of these were sent to the bit-bucket because of blur. I had the Canon 40D on high speed drive mode at six frames per second, so there were going to be some slacker shots. The one above though was with an EF 24-105 f/4 L IS lens and those all turned out nice for the most part.

The word nice was used because this is all it was. A nice snap-shot but not a complete image. Shooting in RAW has its benefits in that there is so much more information available in post production that the image can be made to really pop and look as vibrant as you saw it at capture. Shooting in jpeg is a faster process to an image but does not allow the photographer the same flexibility in post than does a RAW file. Not to say the jpeg can not go through post production but rather if it does the file has already been compressed once by the camera.

The adjustment panel above is what was done to the RAW file at the top of the post. A well exposed image needs very little adjustment to look stellar. Typically the white balance is checked, clarity, vibrance, noise correction, and sharpening are all that are tweaked. The next most likely tool that is use would be a slight tone curve adjustment as this works over the contrast in a localized area.

So those items were done to the image above to end up with the image below. A vignette is not always appropriate in an image but after the above adjustments, the sky and grass area were a little brighter than I liked. Enter Lightroom 2.0 Graduated Filter. Pulling one down from the top deepened the sky and then another from the bottom darkened the grass. This was an artistic decision on my part in that by doing so I was able to focus your attention to the airplane and not other light objects in the image.

FINISHED IMAGE

All those adjustments become very tedious after the first 15 or 20 images. Adobe created a valuable asset in Lightroom that allows repetitive adjustment to be not so tedious. Lets all stand up and give a round of applause for the Presets Panel. Not only does Lightroom come with a good amount of presets, it allows users to define new presets.

These presets allow me to make a slider adjustment very quickly while still allowing me to adjust the slider manually. In my PDP Treatment presets I have at least two adjustments for my most common settings. Some even have a reset function so I can back out of that particular setting. The first adjustment is titled A-CV N75 S100 TC-S V20. With one click of the mouse I can make the following adjustments every time:

• A mild amount of Clarity and Vibrance
• An overall noise reduction of 75%
• A 66% boost in sharpness
• Slight S-Curve adjustment in tone curve
• A 20% vignette

Magic!

Hey, that's long enough for today so TTFN... Doug

RAW' Work It Boys

Now it’s time to put the paint to canvas so let’s get started on how the whole RAW workflow thing goes. At least for me. Personally I use the Develop module in Lightroom to do my RAW processing when I am in the office on the iMac and I use the much more limited version of ACR that works with Elements on my PowerBook G4 that I carry with me while I am out of town. I follow a simple guide of workflow that I call P3 which is Prepare, Process, and Present.

Before we get going, workflow is something that… well… works for you. It may not e the specific process that works for someone else. It really is a personal thing and it should be something that is open to occasional adjustment. Either by new technology or technique, it’s ok to change-up your workflow. Just remember that it will slow your productivity until it becomes muscle memory.

PREPARE : This the stuff I do before the image gets to ACR or the Develop module in Lightroom.

• Import - Either through the downloader or Lightroom Import
  
• Writing my copywrite information to the file.
  
• Rename the files globally by subject.
  
• Basic Keyword if possible
  
• Convert the RAW file to DNG format. I will have a post later on my position on DNG.

PROCESS : This is where we apply the nuts and bolts of ACR. Each panel is run from top to bottom (supposedly this is how Adobe designed it). I pretty much follow this logic only in Lightroom 2.2 and ACR 5.2 (part of CS4 when I upgrade) I do localized editing after the globals are taken care of. So here is the rundown.

• White Balance - First is to run down the drop down options. Then tweak the temperature slider and just a slight change (only if necessary) on the tint slider to balance the temperature.
• Exposure - While looking at the histogram I will push/pull the exposure slider to balance the histogram up while seeing what it does to the image. The top right and left clipping switches can be turned on to help check for blow-outs.
• Recovery - If the highlights are clipped this slider can be pushed a long way before it gets ugly.
• Fill Light - I will push this just to see what it does to the image. If it looks better, it stays.
• Blacks - Rarely do I push the blacks slider. But I don’t just blow it off either.
• Brightness - If all the previous sliders have done their job and the image is not right (even though the histogram is good) I will use this slider just a tad.
• Contrast - Generally I don’t touch this. Curves is the way to go even though curves in elements is kind of pathetic, it is better than contrast.
• Clarity - Generally I push this up to 25 and leave it alone.
• Vibrance - I will always push up the vibrance as necessary to make some of the colors pop.
• Saturation - Generally I don’t touch this unless I am going to get artistic and then I use the Photoshop version of Hue/Saturation as an adjustment layer.
• Curves - If it available I will always use a points curve to adjust my contrast. It is amazing how a bland/hazy image can pop with a curves adjustment.
• HSL - Unless I need to reduce a colorcast I leave this alone. It is a fabulous way to work with the color channels when in black and white editing.
• Sharpening- First off I zoom to 100% then depending on the resolution of the image, I slide to 75 and check it out but I don’t push the amount above 85, Radius usually maxes out at 1.2, Detail and Masking if I use them I use them together. The default is 25 and 0 so if I push the detail up, I position masking halfway between the detail slider and the left side of the range. I know… real scientific isn’t it.
• Noise Reduction - I generally do not apply noise reduction unless necessary and when it is Luminance seems to be the slider of choice.

PRESENT : Depending on the destination will determine how much work goes on in this stage. If it is to the web or a video presentation a simple resize is done. For printing the image will need to be further sharpened. If in ACR the next destination will be Photoshop or Elements. On the other hand if in Lightroom (especially 2.2) most often it is just pushing the sharpness up a bit and send to print. If however heavy retouching, or pixel work is necessary it is definitely time for a trip to Photoshop.

There you have it, RAW in a week. Hopefully this may have been some help to those that are new to RAW or are considering going to RAW. For those that are experienced RAW workers and you have a suggestion, please comment and I can pass it on.

Have a great weekend, and stop by on Monday.

Cya… Doug

RAW' Nuts & Bolts

Today we will finish off the main panels in ACR. The first two panels are not in the Elements version of ACR even though it is the same file (nice blocking bit Adobe!). The others are in all versions of ACR in the past couple of years.

CURVE - The curves function of ACR is like an advanced version of contrast. It does not have the same functionality of Curves in Photoshop, that would be Curves on steroids. In Elements curves can be adjusted under Enhance-Adjust Color- Adjust Color Curves. This is still not the same curves as Photoshop. It is more of curves in ACR that is not enabled in Elements ACR but is in Elements. Did you get that… I’m not sure I did.

Anyhow, there are two ways to adjust curves, these are Parametric and Points. Below is what the parametric curves panel looks like. You adjust the four sliders for Highlights, Lights, Shadows, and Darks as necessary to give you the look you want.

The points curve is just that. You select a point along the curve line and slide it to the position you like. That is all fine and good but what in the world are you looking for when you make a curves adjustment. Read on!

Using the same points curve you can see below a slight “S” curve will give a nice contrast to the image making it pop. What we have in curves is this; There are four sections of tonality to the curves graph. Each for Blacks on the left, darks next, lights, and finally highlights. As you move the line up from its linear origin the specific tone gets lighter. Conversely if yo move the line down the tone will get darker giving a greater contrast to that section.

HSL - This stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance and is designed to work with very specific color ranges. It is not selective editing but rather a range edit.

Hue Changes a specific color. For example, you can change a blue sky from cyan to purple. The problem is that it is not selective, so if there was a blue fish tank in the image it would also change color.

Saturation Changes the color vividness or purity of the color. That same blue sky can go from gray to a highly saturated blue.

Luminance Simply turns the power up on the color range making it brighter.

NOISE REDUCTION - When you try to push a sensor with increased ISO or exposure times, digital noise can be captured in the image. To counter this, ACR provides two tools to adjust this. One for black and white noise (Luminance) and one for Color. The lastest versions of ACR do a pretty good job but earlier versions were really a joke. You would be for better off picking up Noise Ninja or one of the other Noise plug-ins.

SHARPENING - As stated in the Clarity section, a RAW image is not sharpened when it comes out of the camera. This level of of sharpening is not intended for output sharpening. It is designed to bring the image up to a minimum level of sharpness where it can further be sharpened creatively or for output. You really need to have the image at 100% zoom when you are sharpening to get an idea when you are going too far.

Amount - What can I say… It is how much you are sharpening. Pushing this too much will cause halo’s to appear.

Radius - This equates to how many pixels are being sharpened. Normally this should not be any more than 1.2 unless you want to get freaky with your image.

Detail - Decreases the haloing from pushing sharpening too far.

Masking - Forces the sharpening effect to edges.

All in all there is some really high end number crunching going on when you are processing a RAW image in ACR. Not just the fact that you are making changes, it is being done at a 16 bit level.

Tomorrow is the last day on this RAW processing extravaganza. Hopefully it will all come together in a viable workflow.

We’ll see you then… Doug

RAW' Topical Cream

Today we are going to get into the nuts and bolts of ACR (if you don’t know by now that is Adobe Camera Raw). First we look at the histogram and what it is telling us. Secondly will be the most used panel in ACR and that is the BASIC panel. I titled this Topical Cream as it is the first contact you have with the digital negative. You use the OTC cream before you go to the doctor don't you?

HISTOGRAM - This is a graphic illustration of the luminance (brightness) and tonality of the data captured by the cameras sensor. Not only does it provide an idea of the overall quality of light shown by the white area, the RGB channels are also represented. The histogram on the back of your camera is based on the JPEG image that is being shown on the camera display. Often times people will notice the RAW image does not look like the one on the camera display. This is because the displayed image is a processed JPEG and the RAW image you import into ACR is not. At least not until you process it. The beauty here is that you have total control over what the outcome will look like given the quality of the initial image.

The horizontal scale of the histogram represent the tonality and the vertical magnitude of each tone shows the pixels as a ratio of total pixels available. This is where bit depth comes into play. Ansel Adams and Fred Archer came up with the Zone System in 1941 quantified the values of light across eleven tones of light from black to light. With digital this equates to values of zero (black) and 255 (white). The RGB values use the same scale. In digital when tonality is in the 0 or 10 zone they are considered to have no usable data and are blown out or clipped. The histogram is manipulated by adjusting the sliders in the BASIC ACR panel discussed below.

BASIC - If there were to be only one panel available to correct a digital RAW file, this would be it. Most images if shot with any skill will only require a slight adjustment in the BASIC panel and they should be good to go. The BASIC panel is broken down into three sections, White Balance, Exposure, and Clarity. I futher devide the Exposure section down to Brightness.

White Balance - If the white balance is not correct the image will not represent what you were looking at when the image was captured. It can also be used in an artistic fashion to enhance the image as the artist you are.

The temperature value is calibrated in Kelvin while the tint scale is relative. As seen in the diagram below, the White Balance drop down window will show the white balance options that are available in the particular camera you used. In this case it was a Canon G9.

Expose - The exposure section of the BASIC panel includes actual Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, and Blacks. Additionally it contains Brightness and Contrast but we will separate that for now.

Exposure - As this slider is positioned the values represent stops of light as a reference. This effect the entire image and changes can be seen in on the histogram.

Recovery - The recovery slider is used to pull data away from the clipped edge of the highlights and those in zone 10 (255). This is where RAW shines as there is always more data in the file than in a JPEG. When you slide this slider to the right you will notice the right side of the histogram move towards the center.

Fill Light - This is pretty much opposite from Recovery. When the histogram is shoved over to the left side and exposure has been adjusted, further shadow boosting can be made by use of the fill light slider. Here when the slider is moved to the right the left side of the histogram will move towards the center. Pushing this slider too far can generate noise as it may be generating data from nowhere as it interpolates and inserts information.

Blacks - This slider should be used with great care. It essentially resets were black is defined. I rarely use this slider unless the image has enough high end exposure to support the push.

The Missing 2 - Brightness and Contrast are actually part of the exposure section of the BASIC panel but there use is not as relevant as the others.

Brightness - This slider simply boosts the luminance of the entire image. Unlike exposure that adjusts data, brightness adds data across the board. I rarely use this slider.

Contrast - This does exactly what it says it does. Depending on the version of ACR will determine the effectiveness of this slider. Version 5.2 and Lightroom 2.2 provides a very good quality with this slider. If I am working in Elements I will generally use Levels and then Brightness/Contrast in the Adjust Lighting option under Enhance. Mostly as an adjustment layer though as this is lossless.

Clarity - Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast. It is a form of sharpening and is best adjusted at 100% zoom. To maximize the effect, increase the setting until halos are seen near edge details and then reduce the setting slightly. There are many levels of sharpening; In camera, Processed, and Output. In camera is what is done to a JPEG, processed is what is done in Photoshop/Elements, and output is what is done prior to printing for the relevant print resolution.

Saturation - I have skipped Vibrance for the moment. Saturation will boost the color luminance value across the board on a linear basis. Blues are bluer, greens are greener… You get the idea.

Vibrance - No this one is where the magic happens in ACR. This act similar to the Saturation slider only it leave in a non-linear approach. This means that when you apply a Vibrance adjustment, the less saturated colors will get more of a saturation boost than those colors that are already saturated. The real benefit results in that it generally leaves facial toning alone. Cool stuff.

Ok… That was a good bit if info. Tomorrow we will get into the Curves, Hue, Saturation, and Luminance panels.

See You then… Doug

RAW’ Let’s Get Dirty

In this weeks venture into RAW, today we will get into the theory of the digital capture process.

Digital Sensors - Before we can get into the processing of digital data, it helps to understand where why, and how that data is gathered. Below are two sensors with a relative size of a full frame and an APS-C (1.5 or 1.6 crop factor) sensor. The red, green and blue pattern is called a Bayer filter after a Kodak inventor by the name of Dr. Bryce E. Bayer. There are twice as many green filter elements as red and blue to match the human eyes resolving power with green light (Google angular resolution for more). Further due to the sizes of the sensors with the same number of pixels, the larger size sensor can sample a larger slice of light.

Lossless Data - This is rather simple. If you make a change to an image and can go back and make it the way it was, it is termed to be Lossless data. On the other hand if the image can not be reverted back to the original, data is lost and is termed Lossy data. This is what a JPEG file does as indicated by the diagram below.

Bit Depth - We will get real cyber-geeky for a second. First off one bite consists of eight bits therefore the binary code of 00000001 has the decimal equivalent of 1. Thus 00000010 = 2, 00000100 = 3 and so on. Combining all these various combinations of ones and zeros in one bite will come up with 256 combinations. It works by doubling the number with each bit (e.g. 2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256). It starts with two and must be an even number and zero does not count as it can not be a multiplier.

So what does this have to do with capturing a beautiful landscape, flower, or face? The camera sensor in most DSLR’s today captures 12 bits of data per channel. What these numbers represent are brightness levels or tonality. So 12 bits provides for 4096 tonal steps of data. The Canon 5D Mk II captures 14 bit which equates to 16384 tonal steps of data.

UPDATE 3/1/09

Here is a really good graphic of what I have explained above. Thanks to a post by Jim DiVitale at Digital Imaging Tune-Up Clinic. Read the whole post here.

A RAW image is further sampled to 16 bit which provides for 65,536 tonal steps per color channel. So when a JPEG is used, the computer looses 65,280 possibilities to adjust the image. Gone... Nada... Nothing… History Bubba!

Hopefully the graphic below shows what happen “In camera” when capturing to JPEG vs RAW.

Armed with this basic understanding as of capture, tomorrow we will get into some of the editing tools in Adobe’s Camera Raw.

C U Then… Doug

Monday - RAW’ It’s Not About Meat

This week is dedicated to RAW processing and for sure it is not an end all tutorial to RAW. It should if you are a JPEG shooter, give you some understanding as to the benefits to shooting in RAW. I don’t want to get into the RAW vs JPEG debate at this point, but suffice it to say, JPEG files by their nature give you as the photographer less to work with than a RAW file. If max data is not important (e.g. ebay photos) then JPEG’s are probably fine.

A brief overview on how a digital camera creates both a RAW and JPEG file, take a look at the image below.

Much happens before any “processing” occurs. First off the light we see is in a smooth wave form that are turned into electrical signals that must be stored while the image is being converted to digital or a numeric value consisting of ones and zeros. What happens next will determine if the stored image will be a JPEG or a RAW file.

If you are totally unfamiliar with what RAW is, here is the deal. It is data from the camera sensor with as little without any processing in the camera that would normally be applied to a JPEG file. While JPEG is a standard that is literally readable in any computer operating system, RAW is a proprietary format by camera manufacturer and camera model. The camera manufacturer (at least Canon and Nikon) write their own RAW conversion software. This is software that might just as well be trays of fluid filled with developer, stop bath,and water. It is left up to the individual to work with the digital tools to produce an image that can then be edited in photo-editing software such as Photoshop or Elements.

The rest of the week will cover the following:

Tuesday - RAW’ Let’s Get Dirty

• Digital Sensors
  
• Lossless vs Lossy
  
• Bit depth
  

Wednesday - RAW’ Topical Cream

• Histogram
  
• BASIC
  

Thursday - RAW’ Nuts & Bolts

• CURVE
  
• HSL
  

Friday - RAW’ Work-it Boys

• It’s not all that - Fundamental RAW workflow
  

Stay tuned and we will continue tomorrow... Doug