MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: pixel8 on May 05, 2014, 20:27
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When I look at my photos in Lightroom they look Great but when I take my photos that I am going to stack into Helicon Focus they look dual and washed out. Does anyone know why that happens and how to fix that, I am shooting in Raw and saving as a Tif when I save in Helicon Focus. Do I need to save the Metadata first or export them to PhotoShop first?
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My work flow is as follows: Shoot in RAW (5DII). Open in PS CS6 RAW convertor. Make whatever adjustments needed to all images simultaneously. Save as TIFF. Open the TIFF files in Helicon Focus and let it do it's thing. Save output as a TIFF file. Open this TIFF file in PS CS6 and finish any post processing, including adding all metadata. Never had any problems following this sequence.
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My workflow: convert RAW images to be used in stack to DNG's in LR, adjust exposures to balance across all in stack if necessary, export to Helicon (as DNG,s) and let it do it's thing, export from Helicon as a Tiff. Take it into the Develop module in LR and finish it off.
I don't see any shift in color or contrast when going to or from Helicon.
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what exactly do you mean by dual and washed out?
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what exactly do you mean by dual and washed out?
guess he meant dull
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- I first make the RAWs adjustments in Lightroom. I find that it is better to work on images already well exposed and contrasted, with a correct white balance, before to start the work in Helicon Focus.
It is better to not use any kind of lens correction, distortion, effect, crop and local brushes (gradients, spot removal, etc) in Lightroom, better to do only the basic RAW adjustments.
-Then I export in jpeg higher quality (no need tiff or else because the images will not be re-saved in jpeg then, so they will not lose quality, and with jpeg the job is faster in Helicon Focus when you have stacks with a lot of images)
- I import the images in Helicon Focus and chose the method (B is the one I use more, but it is not necessarily the best for all situations), then I let the software to do the job, and I save the result with a descriptive name in psd format.
- At last I open the psd file in Photoshop and do some necessary adjustments (generally I have to correct a little the levels to “pop” the image because, yes, it can appear a little dull sometimes).
- Once I am satisfied I trash RAWs and jpegs.
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Once the resulting image is imported in Lightroom I put keywords, title and description, and it is ready for the microstocks.
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what exactly do you mean by dual and washed out?
If I use Helicon Remote then they already look Dull or lack of any color saturation, basically a Raw file look. But if I take the photos Manually and they are going into Lightroom without doing any adjustments in Lightroom they already look better but as soon as I go to open those files in Helicon Focus they look like Raw files, as where in Lightroom they look like jpegs with adjustments.
So my plan is to take the photos manually so they go into Lightroom then make adjustments, Save as Jpegs then send them into Helicon Focus. Is that a good plan? or Should I just take them into Helicon Foucs and Stack them, then send it to Lightroom and make adjustments? Because I tried that but the photo didn't seem to look as good even with the adjustments!
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As pointed out by Beppe, it is better to make the adjustments first in LR, and export them as TIFF or JPG files for Helicon stack processing.