Suggestions for RAW PP?

[chrisc]

Hi,

I've been shooting RAW for the last year, but I'm struggling with post processing. I'd like to move to the "next level" but I am having trouble finding good resources for working in RAW in general terms. There are quite a few books about working in RAW in photoshop, but I'm looking more for information on fundamentals.

My goal with digital photography is to get the shot right (as right as possible with my limited experience) when I take the picture. I don't want to futz around in photoshop with multiple layers, burning, lightening, etc. to get the picture right.

I would like to be able to just tweak the levels/sliders, adjust white balance, tweak the exposure and sharpness a tad and be done with it. If that doesn't help the picture then I will try harder next time to get the shot right while shooting.

I'm assuming all of this tweaking can be done in Canon DPP, but I haven't been able to find any books specifically on using Canon DPP, or books that deal with RAW in general terms.

I play with the sliders, but I really have no idea what the "correct" method is. Sometimes I make a photo better, more often than not I make it look worse.

Any suggestions on where to start with RAW processing? Can Canon DPP do it all for me, or do I really need Photoshop even though I won't be using most of its capabilities?

Thanks in advance,
Chris C.

[arodney]

Hi,
I would like to be able to just tweak the levels/sliders, adjust white balance, tweak the exposure and sharpness a tad and be done with it. If that doesn't help the picture then I will try harder next time to get the shot right while shooting.


That's pretty much the drill with a good Raw processor, do all the major tone and color work there. I prefer Lightroom for this. You can play with Adobe Camera Raw which share the same processing pipeline or download a demo of LR and see how it works for you. Some people have a decided preference over one Raw processor than another, you just have to try them out. But your initial idea of processing is spot on the money!

[MichaelKirk]

If you don't want to spend that much money.
Paint Shop Pro is an excellent software - not sure about RAW processing (I assume it would be just as good), but I started with PSP and only shot jpeg - I thought it was excellent.

Now I have switched to Lightroom and CS3. I do the majoriety of my editing in Lightroom and only sharpening, noise reduction and some simple editing in CS3 (mainly because I don't know much about CS3 right now.

Michael




Hi,

I've been shooting RAW for the last year, but I'm struggling with post processing. I'd like to move to the "next level" but I am having trouble finding good resources for working in RAW in general terms. There are quite a few books about working in RAW in photoshop, but I'm looking more for information on fundamentals.

My goal with digital photography is to get the shot right (as right as possible with my limited experience) when I take the picture. I don't want to futz around in photoshop with multiple layers, burning, lightening, etc. to get the picture right.

I would like to be able to just tweak the levels/sliders, adjust white balance, tweak the exposure and sharpness a tad and be done with it. If that doesn't help the picture then I will try harder next time to get the shot right while shooting.

I'm assuming all of this tweaking can be done in Canon DPP, but I haven't been able to find any books specifically on using Canon DPP, or books that deal with RAW in general terms.

I play with the sliders, but I really have no idea what the "correct" method is. Sometimes I make a photo better, more often than not I make it look worse.

Any suggestions on where to start with RAW processing? Can Canon DPP do it all for me, or do I really need Photoshop even though I won't be using most of its capabilities?

Thanks in advance,
Chris C.

[mrcoons]

I found Canon's Learning Center can answer a lot of questions about using DPP. Check it out Here (http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html).

[ifocus]

I found Canon's Learning Center can answer a lot of questions about using DPP. Check it out Here (http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html).

You can try raw therapee. It is a free software but very well made and its output quality is suprisingly good. It was good enough so I donated to the developer to help him. Work flow is really straight forward. I finish the best image using Picture Window Pro 4; a dedicated picture editor supporting 48 bits processing. Very fast, really powerful masking and outstanding color correction tool. Anyway, there are so many option out there; so I guess you need to try until you find your comfort zone. --JY

[chrisc]

Thanks all for the links, advice, and encouragement. I will give lightroom a try and check out the DPP tutorials. I did read the DPP manual and that helped a little.

Thanks again!

Chris C.

[BradfordBenn]

I really like Lightroom as well. I have used PaintShop Pro, InfraView, Canon's software... seems to be the fastest, most consistent, and a tool that still gives one an upgrade path if needed to other Adobe products.