Help - post processing!!

[joethephotographer]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

 

[480sparky]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

Do all your editing to the raw file. Only convert to JPEG at the end if you need to.

 

[joethephotographer]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

Do all your editing to the raw file. Only convert to JPEG at the end if you need to.

Ok, thanks. That helps

 

[apaflo]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

Do all your editing to the raw file. Only convert to JPEG at the end if you need to.

What you mean is correct, but lets clarify it with a more accurate description.

First, the RAW file is not an image file. It does contrain an embedded JPEG formatted image and if "viewed", that is what is immediately seen. The only way to work with a RAW file is to first interpolate (demosaic) it to get an RGB image. The RGB image can then be saved as a TIFF or JPEG (or other) RGB formatted image file. To begin with, or later, only the RGB image is ever edited, and the RAW data is never edited.

That isn't entirely clear because some editors will rewrite the RAW file with the conversion parameters used to generate the RGB file. It seems as if you are editing a "RAW image", but that is never what happens. Interpolation generates the image in a 16 bit format, and if the file is saved to a 16 bit format it can be edited again with another program without any loss. If it is converted to any 8 bit format there will be loss. If it is converted to an 8 bit format with lossy compression (JPEG) there will be further loss.

Regardless, sharpening should be done after that file is resampled to the final size that will be used. That is irregardless of whether it was previously sharpened before it was resampled. The reason is because the amount, and even the type, of sharpening that will produce the best results is very likely to be quite different for an image upsampled to produce a 16x20 print and the same image downsampled for web viewing.

To summarize, you can't actually edit the RAW data. It's a question of where the RGB image is edited.

 

[The_Traveler]

Editing on the image in the RAW editor is non-destructive i.e. anything done can be undone. As opposed to work on a jpeg or tiff or psd which generally alters the original. (there are exceptions but that's a different issue.)

With Adobe Raw the edits are maintained in a separate sidecar file.

 

[hirejn]

Exposure is easy to get consistently perfect if you understand metering and exposure. I don't recommend "fixing" anything in post.

You can't edit RAW files. You can only edit the set of instructions that rides with them. Therefore, if you crop a RAW file in say Bridge, the crop is only a preview. All RAW edits are previews of the final image. The original RAW file is never touched. Lightroom saves your edits as you go and you can always return to the original file or go back to any point in the editing process. I crop in post only as a finishing touch, not as a substitute for cropping in camera. Lightroom is a non-destructive editor. The changes are never applied until you export the file, but JPEG and RAW are still fundamentally different and you don't have as much to start with in a JPEG file as you do a RAW.

I sharpen RAW and then then edit TIFFs and export JPEGs via LR. Understand that JPEG is a finished file when it comes out of the camera. The camera has already applied a sharpening profile. Even if you've selected none or neutral, it's still a finished file and any more editing will only be pushing around pixels like dried paint. You can't make a different sharpening decision in post. You can only make an additional decision on top of the original, thereby degrading the file. RAW is more of a "wet" file; it's not completely dry when it comes from the camera and you can manipulate its sharpness and lots of other settings in post before you export a finished file like a JPEG.

 

[The_Traveler]

Exposure is easy to get consistently perfect if you understand metering and exposure. I don't recommend "fixing" anything in post.

You can only make an additional decision on top of the original, thereby degrading the file. RAW is more of a "wet" file; it's not completely dry when it comes from the camera and you can manipulate its sharpness and lots of other settings in post before you export a finished file like a JPEG.

Sometimes a 'perfect exposure doesn't exist in the specific situation and many times selective sharpening on the tiff or psd can improve the final image

 

[luccao]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

Do all your editing to the raw file. Only convert to JPEG at the end if you need to.

It's simple: Open your photos on Lightroom or Photoshop, and always photograph in raw. It's te best format for the post processing work. Just use JPEG in the end, like 480sparky say. One example is that a Raw file have 21mb~30mb and a JPEG file have 400kb~1mb (at most). These are all about the pixels informations.

 

[jenko]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

Congrats on learning manual mode! I have found that with digital, underexposing by just a tad is always easier to correct than overexposing. So, if you're in a situation where you might be likely to overexpose, stop down. Blown highlights can never be recovered, but you can always lift areas that are too dark.

I suggest cropping the final. You can crop in camera raw (photoshop), but I always crop in ps itself. Same goes for sharpening. You can sharpen in camera raw, but I usually do it in ps. It depends on which editing program you use, but I usually save two versions of the image. The first is a psd file. This file includes all of my adjustment layers so that I can always go back and see what I did or change something. The second is a flattened jpeg. This one I can use for printing, resizing, and posting online, etc.

 

[KmH]

When you lift areas that are to dark post process, you make image noise more visible.

Even at a digital camera's lowest native ISO setting every photo made will have some amount of image noise.

Because of the way digital photographs work, nailing the correct exposure is much more critical shooting digital than it is for shooting film.
Expose To The Right (ETTR) of the image histogram maximizes the luminosity information in a digital photograph.
The more information there is, the greater the editing head space the photo has.
Optimizing Exposure
ETTR

The amount of and sharpening technique used is dependent on image content. More specifically it is dependent on the edge frequency in a photo.
A photo with a lot of trees in it will have many more edges in the photo than the portrait of a person will have.

Sharpening is a fairly complex subject and can only be covered well by writing a book - Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition

But, sharpen as a 3 step process.
1. Capture sharpen the Raw file as a global edit. Global edits are edits done equally to the entire photograph. Capture sharpening is applied lightly.
2. Local and artistic sharpening. Local/artistic edits are edits done to only part of a photograph. Depending on the Raw conversion application used, local/artistic edits can be done in the Raw converter, or in a layered bit mapped image file type like PSD of TIFF.
3. Output sharpen (which often means sharpening a JPEG). As a general rule, photographs destined for electronic display cannot handle as much sharpening as photographs destined for print.

Where in my workflow I crop is variable.
If I have no specific output requirements I usually crop in the camera viewfinder.
If I am shooting for a client I usually 'shoot fat' (leave extra space in the camera viewfinder to allow for post process cropping to different aspect ratio image frames) unless the client has made a specific request for framing.
When I have a finished image goal in mind when I start editing and did not crop in the camera viewfiner, I crop early in my work flow so I can see the final framing as I edit.

 

[DiskoJoe]

So, I've been fiddling with my camera for some time now learning how to master the "M" mode! Although I've been able to get mostly decent pics not all the photographs turn out exactly the way I want them to - some of them are overexposed.

This forces me to turn to do a bit of post processing (brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc). I usually only shoot RAW so I guess have a little leeway when it comes to over/under exposed photographs.

I have a few questions on the "work flow":
1. Although I usually don't crop I was wondering if I should crop the RAW file or the final JPEG - or is there a secret option C?
2. Sharpening - is it better to sharpen RAW or JPEG. I've read contradicting views online so i'm confused.

there is no point to saving a jpeg to do all of this stuff when you can do it to the raw and just save a jpeg copy. I dont think you have really thought about what you are asking here. If you shoot raw then all the editing will be done in raw mode until you save it to another format.