RAW edits

[SabrinaO]

Those of you that shoot in RAW, what do you normally adjust for pp? My pics have been looking kind of... blah. :meh: Do you peform a standard action on your pics or do you edit each one individually?

 

[IgsEMT]

Generally speaking, RAW or JPG, WB(if needs be slightly tweaked), Contrast (BIG ONE) and crops/rotate. On RAW also sharpness and noise.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

Generally speaking, RAW or JPG, WB(if needs be slightly tweaked), Contrast (BIG ONE) and crops/rotate. On RAW also sharpness and noise.

I agree with this. But I sometimes will adjust the color/saturation and/or conversion to B&W or Sepia.

 

[kundalini]

With RAW files, there are always adjustments. Period. The only standard part is within the series shot under the same lighting conditions. That's wher LR3 shines. Fix one and synch the rest. NR is pretty good, but an impressive feature in LR3 is lens correction that I recently dicovered.

I import to LR3. Make global adjustments. Export to ACR as a DNG file, tweak a bit more and open in PS CS5 for final output to jpeg.

 

[Boomn4x4]

For every day "snap shots" I do have a "default" profile setup that I automatically apply if I'm doing bulk processing. I slightly bump up the highlights and slightly drop down the shadows on the tone curve, I apply a little shapening, bump up the contrast and add a little color boost. I just select all, and put it into the processing queue and they are all given the same processing.

If I'm doing anything other than every day snap shots, each shot usually gets processed seperatly. I still apply the same "default" profile, but depending on the shot, there is no telling what I would do with it from there. Two of the more common adjustments are adjusting the white balance and applying noise reduction.

 

[Vinny]

Something that wasn't mentioned is that different programs affect the RAW image differently. I haven't used Photoshop yet but the program I have is kind of weak for RAW vs Nikon's View NX2. But Nikon's program doesn't have a lot of tools as it seems Photoshop or Lightroom has for tweaking the image.

I would imagine that if you find that you do certain things to a photo all the time you can save them as an "automatic" function if the program you use allows you to do that.

As far as tweaking I have adjusted exposure, adjusted the highlights, adjusted the shadows in RAW (limited tools available) and am starting to play around with the color curve a little to tweak the colors a little outside of the RAW area of my software.

 

[mrpink]

Those of you that shoot in RAW, what do you normally adjust for pp? My pics have been looking kind of... blah. :meh: Do you peform a standard action on your pics or do you edit each one individually?

Do whatever is needed to achieve the result you wanted when originally taking the shot. No more, no less.







p!nK

 

[KmH]

I have a standard set of steps I consider for each RAW image. As kundalini pointed out, when the lighting conditions for a series of images is the same basic and global edits can be applied to the entire series at once.

Since Lightroom 3 also uses the ACR 6 rendering engine, Photoshop's ACr can also sync a series of RAW images.

Back to the standard set if editing steps I consider for each RAW image, it is simple considering each image relative the tools and sliders available in ACR/Lightroom.

The sliders in particular are arranged in the order they should be considered for use.

I recommend the book: Real World Camera Raw by Fraser and Schewe for your version of Photoshop or Lightroom. (Lightroom 2 and CS4 use the same version of ACR, ACR 5. Lightroom 3 and CS5 use ACR 6.)