RAW workflow

[joshhuntnm]

I am new to shooting RAW and am consulting Photoshop Elements 6 for digital Photographers. they suggest the steps below. I'd be curious about what steps you normally take. I am most interested in which sliders you almost NEVER use, or use very sparingly. This list is my adaptation of the book, which I found helpful. You won't find it listed exactly this way in the book.

Step 1 white balance
Step 2 exposure. They suggest moving exposture up (or down) till it looks right, then move the recovery slider until there is no (or little) clipping. Click on the triangle in the upper right hand corner to toggle on clipping.
Step 3 shadows to make the blacks black. If a little clipping occurs in the shadows, it is OK
Step 4 brightness slider. This effects mostly the mid tones. They use this the least.
Step 5 Fill light. All photos don't need this, but some do. I got a little lost at this point, because it seems this is doing more or less the same thing as the brightness. They say if you move it too much you will also need to move up the Blacks.
Step 6 Vibrancy. They really like this slider. In my (very) limited experience, it seems it needs to be moved carefully. Too little is better than too much. It can add pop if you don't overdo it.
Step 7 Clarity. They really like this one too. They call it the "make my photos look better" slider. Similar to sharpening. I didn't quite grasp the difference.
Step 8 cropping and straightening. Unlike cropping in PS or Elements, the additional information is saved so if you want to go back and get it you can.
Step 9 Sharpening. they say they do a little here and a little at the end of the process. Around 100%, radius of 1
Step 10 save as a dng file

There is a quite a bit more detail in the book, but i wanted to make myself some Cliff notes, and get some feed back from the experts on dgrin.

[arodney]

Basically work top down, left to right in ACR. If the exposure is way off, I'd work on that first, then White Balance but otherwise, I'd work in the order the tools are presented to you. You can mix and match the order, but if you work this way, you'll usually get the biggest work out of the way fastest.

Also, this is about the best $39 you can spend to learn about ACR and it just came out the other day:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21&products_id=177

[pathfinder]

Thanks for the heads up, Andrew, I am sure that video will be very informative and entertaining.

I will download mine this evening.

[AaronNelson]

fill light will lighten the shadows globally, brightness controls every pixel...( i hope im right there)

goto 1:1 ratio to see how far you can fill without noise (but dont use it unless you have too)

[AaronNelson]

clarity you can use until halo-ing occures. then back off about 20% from that point and you should be ok....

[AaronNelson]

i usually never use recovery....

[AaronNelson]

sharpening is the biggie...i only use sharpening in lightroom. (only because it is non distructive in LR, i think??) it would be interesting to have a el'master chime in on that one....

[arodney]

LR 1.4 has capture sharpening, its totally non destructive.

Beta 2.0 has this plus output sharpening. If the distinction between the two is not clear:

Http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html

For fun, take a Raw, apply some capture sharpening (even the default), print it out of 1.4, then use the same capture sharpening and print out of 2.0. Major difference in quality. This is still undergoing revisions as the beta progresses so if you have comments, now's the time to tell us. Oh, you get output sharpening for web and slide show too!

[joshhuntnm]

i usually never use recovery....

hmmm. . .
the book I read said he uses it all the time: dial up the expsore till it looks right, then dial up recovery to remove clipping.

[arodney]

hmmm. . .
the book I read said he uses it all the time: dial up the expsore till it looks right, then dial up recovery to remove clipping.

I use it all the time too. I'd do the major work with Exposure, then use it if necessary (again, work top down, left to right). Even if you can't get everything back with Recovery, you can get a tad more back using the curves targeted to this area of the tone curve. Curves by the way are for subtle fine tuning, often they are totally unnecessary to use.

What Recovery does is examine the three color channels and if it finds any data in one or two channels, it can rebuild data in the others that are clipping. Of course, if you hit true sensor saturation of exposure, nothing will bring back the data. But Recovery uses a clever means of building data if something exists on one of the other channels.

[AaronNelson]

i never used recovery because i simply didnt know it did that!...now i get it. i thought it was only suppose to help with blown highlights....

the info never ends......thanks arodney!