Author Topic: Do you postprocess all photos or not? (Read 3813 times)

sensovision · « **on:** January 27, 2008, 08:10 »

Wonder how you post process photographs before submitting them to stock agencies. Are all photos getting post processed or only those which have wrong white balance, need cropping, or something else?

ale1969 · « **Reply #1 on:** January 27, 2008, 08:15 »

Since I shoot in RAW I postoprocess every image the same way as once you have to develop the film negative.

Then after the usual stuff (noise, levels, contrast, detail enhancement) just a few images need further post processing, mainly the ones where I somehow missed the right illumination.

madelaide · « **Reply #2 on:** January 27, 2008, 13:11 »

I shott JPEGs, and I ALWAYS edit something - WB and contrast, mainly. Even in photos that come well out of the camera, I think a minor tweak can help.

Regards,
Adelaide

mwp1969 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 27, 2008, 17:33 »

I post-process all photos even if it is just a minor levels or color curves adjustment. Noise Reduction with Neat Image only if needed.

Generally this is my process sometime with a minimum of at least usually one of the steps and sometimes more ...

#1 Save as .tiff
#2 Adjust levels (in a separate layer)
#3 Adjust Saturation / Hue as necessary (in a separate layer)
#4 Adjust Color Curves
#5 Crop as required
#6 Clone out Logos, Trademarks or Blur recognizeable faces w/o a model release
#7 Sharpen as necessary (always last task before saving)
#7 Save as .tiff w/ layers
#8 Save as .jpg with layers flattened
#9 Use Noise Reduction on .jpg as required

I hope this helps

Mark

sensovision · « **Reply #4 on:** January 27, 2008, 17:48 »

Quote

#1 Save as .tiff
#2 Adjust levels (in a separate layer)
#3 Adjust Saturation / Hue as necessary (in a separate layer)
#4 Adjust Color Curves
#5 Crop as required
#6 Clone out Logos, Trademarks or Blur recognizeable faces w/o a model release
#7 Sharpen as necessary (always last task before saving)
#7 Save as .tiff w/ layers
#8 Save as .jpg with layers flattened
#9 Use Noise Reduction on .jpg as required
I hope this helps

thanks Mark! I don't have own scheme on working with stocks and for editing own photos I've used different steps which wouldn't be so effective as yours, I think. So your advices would surely come into help.

madelaide · « **Reply #5 on:** January 27, 2008, 17:55 »

Mark,

Why NoiseNinja in the JPEG? It's better to use it on the TIFF. Editing and resaving a JPEG will lose quality.

In fact denoising is my first adjustment when an image is noisy (if I can't remove noise decently, not even downsizing the image, then I leave it), or second if I the image is dark and I have to lighten up, what brings noise.

Regards,
Adelaide

LadyBlueEyes · « **Reply #6 on:** January 27, 2008, 18:09 »

Yes, I post-process all my images. I shoot in Tiff and then usually end up cropping a bit, adjusting levels at bit and cloneing out undesirable elements.

Kngkyle · « **Reply #7 on:** January 27, 2008, 18:57 »

I post-process everything. It makes a world of difference in most cases.

Beckyabell · « **Reply #8 on:** January 27, 2008, 19:28 »

Yes, Everything.
I hate when people say they don't. Post-processing has been a main step of photography since the beginning of photography. It used to be done in the darkroom or the color lab , sometimes with the help of airbrushing, now we perform these steps in a digital darkroom. It's not cheating, just making sure that your work looks the best it can.

mwp1969 · « **Reply #9 on:** January 27, 2008, 23:36 »

Good point Adelaide. I save my .tiffs in un-flattened format so that I can save the layers in case I want to make other creations or undo steps. I have noticed no noticeable degradation by saving NR as the last step and only applying it to the final .jpg image. NR can have a smoothing effect and I want to preserve the .tiff file in case I want to use it again in the future.

I use NR as needed at the end of post-processing since, post-processing itself generates noise. This is especially true if you do several stages of tweaking levels or hue/saturation w/o doing it in a separate layer. Also if sharpening is selectively applied, that in itself can generate huge amounts of noise if not carefully applied, so once again the benefit that if I feel NR is required, it comes as the final step in the entire process.

Mark

ale1969 · « **Reply #10 on:** January 28, 2008, 01:32 »

If you have a pretty noise free image from where to start you add noise with levels, curves and saturation only if you have to heavily compensate a wrong exposition. Practically you try to take out from the shadows details that due to the nature of the digital sensors simply aren't there or are very faint and they seem noise. This is the reason to expose to the right with digital.

The same with sharpen. Sharpening adds noise when it's too heavy (often to compensate a focus-lens issue) or there is some noise hiding in the original image ready to come out. The same as above what you see as noise it's faint or out of focus details that the sharpening process just put in evidence.

And if you're asking me how I'm sure of all that it's because I was there too, I was using a PS first and bad lenses with my DSLR later. It's a world of difference using a cheap DSLR with a cheap but sharp 50mm and expose to the right.

Take this image I shot for Alamy as example:

This is taken with my D80 with "el cheapo" 50mm 1.8 plastic chinese nikon lens and the right exposure tecniques.

Let's see a shadowy detail at 100%

The postprocessing work with that image was, in order, my personal raw conversion, Neat Image with the standard d80 ISO100 profile, a gentle High Pass sharpening to compensate the low pass filter of the d80, levels, my personal contrast curve to replicate Provia. Total time 5 mins.

null · « **Reply #11 on:** January 28, 2008, 13:06 »

I can't see why people process their full images through Ninja. I only do the PS CS2 or CS3 noise reduction on a layer, then erase selectively in areas of the original shot where noise is visible: the underside of clouds, of chins, shadowy areas popped up with a soft light light layer. The image should stay crisp where it is crisp right from the cam.

And of course, all tweaking and cloning should be done on the TIFF (preferably 16-bit) and that TIFF stays the master copy. Saving and reopening JPGs adds artifacts every time, even at quality 12.

Popping up your images to look good on thumbs works well for buyers. Istock doesn't like that, so they reject about 3/4 of my shots. No worries... they make me as 1/3 of ShutterStock, so I process for Dreamstime and ShutterStock.

ale1969 · « **Reply #12 on:** January 28, 2008, 15:03 »

Quote from: FlemishDreams on January 28, 2008, 13:06

I can't see why people process their full images through Ninja.

If you use the standard noise profile for the camera/ISO you used it should remove the "fixed" noise pattern, imho though Neat Image do a lot better job with the standard profile settings while Noise Ninja is more useful for very noisy images (that should not sent to agencies) as I found it a bit more aggressive.

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Author Topic: Do you postprocess all photos or not? (Read 3813 times)

sensovision

ale1969

madelaide

mwp1969

sensovision

madelaide

LadyBlueEyes

Kngkyle

Beckyabell

mwp1969

ale1969

null

ale1969

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