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Poll: your camera output (JPEG / settings, RAW / processing approach)

Poll: your camera output (JPEG / settings, RAW / processing approach)

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ahrensjt

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Hi. I just wanted to "benchmark" my approach against what others are doing regarding Camera Output/post processing. At a high level.

Sometimes I'll spend a lot of time in PS Elements on a photo, and I'm trying to re-evaluate the value I get from it (does it make my photo THAT much better... could I better spend the time out taking more photos?).

Obviously no Poll can be comprehensive, but this will give me an idea of how many people process RAW, and whether it's a few adjustments in LR or the whole 9 yards with Plugins etc.

I though about asking how many minutes per photo, but that depends on the expected use. So it's not perfect, but will give something to think about. Thank you.
 
Use the available in the raw conversion software, Lightroom mainly and also Qimage, Capture 8 Pro occasionally. Further edits with Photoshop if needed.
 
i set up the camera vaguely right for the circumstances and shot i want.. i try and get good jpegs but will tweak the ones i think will benefit from it.. some will some wont..

once the tweaking starts its hard to know when to stop.. i only tweak what i consider good images the rest i leave alone.. occasionally i may tweak just for fun and get better at it.. its a seperate skill set all of its own..

i havnt ticked your poll because i dont think there is an option for me..

i never shoot raw only jpegs..

trog
 
I voted the alternative that you call basic editing in LR, DxO etc. But I would say that what you can do in LR5 and DxO is not just basic. I often do a lot of local editing, changing colors, using the geometric tools in both LR and DxO.

Anyway, I shoot RAW and work with RAW files in LR5 or DxO, I would say 95 % in LR5.
 
Use JPEG but process in PSElements 10
 
I think there are many more options than you show, eg I use RAW or jpg depending on what I'm taking. I have a sort of work flow starting with Faststone Image Viewer which I use for sorting because it doesn't discriminate between the two. Generally I then pass through P S Elements ACR for the same reason although sometimes jpg has given me what I want first time. I might introduce other steps into the flow eg Neat Image. Basically I make it up as I go along.

I rarely batch process RAW because I find that I might just as well just take jpgs, the out of camera versions jpgs often being as good or better than batch processed RAW.
 
I usually shoot raw. Aperture is my main tool for editing but I do use several plugins for certain things, especially HDR and B&W. Considering a change to Lightroom due to Apple dropping Aperture. Waiting to see what the Photos app brings when it is officially released.
 
You left out JPG+RAW and import the RAW's to Lightroom. Cull the losers. Fix what's needed. Overwrite the appropriate JPG's. Archive. Then delete the RAW's on the working hard drive.

Photoshop Elements is great for serious editting, but OP might want to look at a Lightroom like product for the white band and exposure corrections. Much faster.
 
trog100 said:
i set up the camera vaguely right for the circumstances and shot i want.. i try and get good jpegs but will tweak the ones i think will benefit from it..

i havnt ticked your poll because i dont think there is an option for me..
Click to expand...
Good point. A good Olympus JPEG would be a fine place to start, and tweak the JPEG as needed. That should have been an option.
 
I take raw+jpeg (Large Normal in the Oly world) then use the jpeg for quick evaluations of what is worth working on. Then batch convert all the raw lot using DxO with a "nice" custom preset that seems to work OK for me for E-P5 and E-PL5, and a survey of the results may lead me to re-do a few with more intervention. Often tweak that custom preset as I get a bit better with DxO. Early days for me with DxO.

Then go back to the raw converted results that I liked from the camera jpegs and see how much I can improve (if at all) on the camera jpegs. May take the result into PaintShop Pro X7 for further fiddles, or simple crops and tweaks in FastStone Viewer.

So the ticked item for me really is "converter with basic editing" as that is really most of what I do now.

Just for interest, also currently exploring again Helicon Filter V5, bought the licence many years back but just now going back into it. A very interesting and capable program, even if a little different in style with its Ukraine origins. It has a simple version of focus stacking built in but yet to try that.

Regards..... Guy
 
JPEG+RAW then Lightroom.

I use the JPEGs just to confirm critical focus/sharpness, because the in-camera raw preview on my GX7 is not detailed enough to easily discern missed focus/motion blur/shutter shock etc.
 
Taj123 said:
Use JPEG but process in PSElements 10
Click to expand...
Same here, generally.

I do use RAW in a small percentage (less than 10%) of circumstances for difficult lighting/contrast or "Really Important" stuff.
Still, jpgs usually are fine OOC, or may get slight cropping in Elements or other simple editor(s).

Heck I still use LView Pro for quick simple edits on my XP machine.

rd
 
For a long time I shot RAW, and did PP in Apples Aperture, which is great for organizing and finding things. When Apple announced they were no longer supporting Aperture I made plans to switch to LR.

But as a trial I decide to shoot for a while only in JPEG , adjusting camera settings to see how the pics are affected. It turns out that Olympus , out of camera JPegs are pretty darn good. Often better than what I was getting processing in Aperture. No doubt this was likely from my poor skills in PP, but it's not something I enjoy all that much in any case .
 
This is a strange answer. I use any and all approaches, from totally "in camera" to processing Raw..depending on my mood at the time. Usually I take both jpg and Raw, but sometimes the Raw is just used as backup, sometimes I do them all as a batch, sometimes look at the jpg's and process the Raw files associated with the ones I like. Sometimes, since I'm a big fan of B&W, just stick a filter on the lens, and force myself to shoot how people used to. So I don't really have any set way of doing anything.
 
I shoot RAW+jpeg, and generally PP the raw for the good pictures.

I generally spend about 20 minutes tweaking the better pictures in Silkypix (like LR) and maybe 10 on the pretty decent ones. This is the exposure, contrast, the "black", the saturation, sharpness, noise reduction, and adjusting the lens geometry. At that point I have a really nice photo, and develop it into a TIFF. Most times it just needs cropping at that point. After all of that a 16MP raw image is typically around 50mp because the software will have filled in the area between pixels and made the lines finer.

If there are signs, wires, people, shadows etc ruining the photo I will remove those.

Then for the images that I can imagine something amazing, I will start the layer work, adding other elements, colors, clouds, etc.

If it's a model, I will generally do some skin smoothing, erase moles or imperfections, slimming, and other enhancements. Fix the any wardrobe issues, such as things not falling right, folded, or a collar that doesn't lay right etc. Also if a make-up artist did what I consider a less than stellar job on models, I will go in and clean up their mistakes. If there are more than one models, and one just looks amazing and the other doesn't carry the shot, I will erase the other and replace her with the set or or other items.

If I only have a JPEG and I want to process it, I first make a PNG or TIFF out of it so there are no more compression artifacts and 16 bit, and then with each major change rename it so I can come back to each version and reuse it.

And finally cropping, publishing and archiving.
 
RAW goes to PhotoNinja > jpegs to PaintShop Pro x5 Ultimate. A little unconventional, but it works. I generally shoot RAW+jpeg, but often find that the RAW just gives those little extra details at the edges of the dynamic range that make a difference. I hang onto PSP X5 because it has NIK Color Efex 3 bundled in and I like the B&W conversion they have. Don't feel like spending the bucks for the full suite from Google.
 
ahrensjt said:
Hi. I just wanted to "benchmark" my approach against what others are doing regarding Camera Output/post processing. At a high level.

Sometimes I'll spend a lot of time in PS Elements on a photo, and I'm trying to re-evaluate the value I get from it (does it make my photo THAT much better... could I better spend the time out taking more photos?).

Obviously no Poll can be comprehensive, but this will give me an idea of how many people process RAW, and whether it's a few adjustments in LR or the whole 9 yards with Plugins etc.

I though about asking how many minutes per photo, but that depends on the expected use. So it's not perfect, but will give something to think about. Thank you.
Click to expand...
I have a hard fitting in any of these. My settings are based on what I shoot. If I'm shooting sports and I'm taking lots of pictures and need to have them ready for the newspaper and internet right away, I use JPG and Aperture. I process and crop them very quickly and post them. It works great and the images work well.

When I do a wedding I shoot RAW and use Lightroom. It takes a lot more time, but the images are fantastic.

Which do I fit in?
 
Probably 95% of my photography is shooting animals for a local rescue shelter. A typical shoot is 200+ shots, so I like to do enough processing to do each animal justice but not get bogged down trying to make things perfect. For the most part I'm not making art (although I do get some really nice ones) - more like I'm creating a catalog for the web. Typically I'll shoot JPEGs at the standard/normal compression setting. From there workflow looks like:
  1. Use an image viewing program (I like ThumbsPlus) and cull out the mis-focused images or blurred images where the subject was moving.
  2. Create a document mapping each animal to the image numbers taken. From this document I'll choose 1-3 images for processing.
  3. Process the selected images. I use an old version of PhotoShop (CS2). Processing steps that I always performs are cropping, noise reduction (I have a Noiseware Professional plug-in for PS), and image resize (max. photo height of 1000 pixels). Frequently I do contrast adjustment (both local and global) and brightness adjustment. Sometimes I'll color-balance but I'm less picky about what I'll accept as adequate here.
  4. Save processed image at a medium compression. In PS CS2 that's a setting of 5 on a scale of 10 (Photoshop's more or less arbitrary scale).
  5. Try to remember what I did wrong on this batch so I might improve the next one ... repeat, rinse ... on to the next shoot.
In general, for every hour I spend shooting I spend almost as much time processing.

I've shot in RAW and sometimes still do, but generally can't improve on the JPEG out of camera. The camera processing has improved so much and I can't really justify the extra workload it would generate for my purposes.
 
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