To: Indieke1 - My camera settings + Image processing...
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Indieke1 wrote:
HELLO
I like your pics very much. Maybe you saw my thread and I was hesitating between the Sony a 6400 and the much cheaper M 50.
Some reviews state the raw is difficult to alter. Now most pics of the two cameras I saw, made me thing the Canon was a bit on the soft side. not on YOUR pics.
So can you tell us more about eventual PP? What you used what you altered?
With my Canon 550 D, I always need to push the contrast to +30, and sharpen a bit more.
Hey there Indieke1.
I tend not to apply any sharpening to my photographs when editing them. It's exceptionally rare for me to need to do so. I feel that the camera has already done a fairly good job of sharpening them to begin with and I prefer not to have the images look too over-sharpened. Some people will apply more sharpening later but that's not how I work (unless it really needs just a little touch of sharpening). I just take a picture and download it. If I want to tweak it further I can and do. There's an exposure dial on my M6 and there's a similar setting on the M50 for deciding how over or under exposed you wish to make your images. That's about it.
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I think that some lenses have smaller apertures (eg f/4) even when open wide and this results in higher contrast images with bolder blacks and shadows. Shots with those lenses tend to be High Contrast and those tend to be harder to alter when you might wish to lift the shadows to reveal details. Low contrast lenses tend to be faster lenses (ef f/2 and f/1.4 etc) and they often offer a bit more leeway during editing. Especially when lifting details from shadows. So the lens used may play a part in what you can do.
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EOS M Default JPEGS
When the EOS M cameras arrive in the box, they have a default JPEG setting applied which is surprisingly soft and not particularly contrasted. Personally, I was a little disappointed when I spent my first day shooting with the EOS M6 - until I realized that the camera was not doing very much to process my images like the original EOS M (Mk1) used to.
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I'll go into detail below but in a nutshell, my process is quite quick for each and any image I tweak....
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(1) Set the camera to internally process the images via User Defined settings.
(2) Download images to computer.
(3) Edit in Lightroom lightly.
(4) Tweak and save final image in Photoshop.
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USER DEFINED settings as found in the EOS M6 Manual.
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Setting up the camera:
For shooting with any of the newer EOS M cameras, you need to select a User Defined PICTURE STYLE setting as a template and then adjust it to your own preference. I selected FINE DETAIL and this applies a respectable amount of color saturation, sharpening and contrast to the images. I then altered the setting slightly by moving the Color Tone slider one click to the right. This applies a little more warmth to the otherwise cool (cyan) looking images. Note that Sharpness Strength is normally 4 by default (I think) so I've only pushed it one notch to get to 4. Even 0 has some degree of contrast automatically applied.
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User Defined Template (Picture Style) = FINE DETAIL.
Sharpness Strength = 4
Sharpness Fineness = 1
Sharpness Threshold = 1
Contrast = 0
Saturation = 1
Color Tone = 1
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Post Processing:
I use Lightroom4 and then resize or retouch in Photoshop. Any similar program will do. I prefer to alter the images slightly from what the camera gives me since the internal processor isn't cranked all the way up with the settings I've used above.
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In Lightroom I use the same method each time:
* If needed I will lift the shadows lightly.
* I will enhance color vibrancy slightly.
* If any bright areas are too bold I MAY drop the intensity slightly.
* Noise and Color Noise is reduced if needed (but only slightly).
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In Photoshop I will clean up any blemishes on people's skin with the healing or clone tools.... and if I feel that the ISO was quite high (producing strong noise in a picture) I will apply more aggressive noise reduction from a Filter (plugin program) called Topaz Denoise.
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These are the sliders I tend to use in Lightroom
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Saving Images:
Then I save my image as a JPEG (level 9 quality). If I suspect that I might need to revisit an image for either further tweaks or because I had to work hard to edit an image (eg weddings, paid projects etc) I will save as either a TIFF or a PSD file. There's no degradation of image data with either of those two files. Raw and Tiff are very similar in this respect... only Raw is not an image file until you extract the data. One thing about saving as a high quality JPEG is that there's room for an emergency edit without risking too much image destruction. Flat or toned skies are the only thing that might suffer. But any resaving of a JPEG file always results in a small amount of image degradation each time you do it unless this file is straight from the camera. JPEGS from the camera ought to be particularly clean with no banding in the skies and no dithering. The algorithm used by the camera's image processor. You can (and will) see small amounts of antialiasing from highly contrasted areas in a picture from the camera but that is usually subtle. I've only on rare occasions needed to touch this up.
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This is the quality level I tend to save my files in after editing with Photoshop
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My method won't be the same as the techniques used by other members here and some of them will prefer to shoot RAW. Others will question why I'd bother shooting with JPEG if I intend to edit the images later. But each image from my camera is generally quite acceptable in JPEG form and the editing I might apply will vary in intensity from one image to another. Some need no tweaking at all. Others will benefit from adjusting shadows and any overly bright highlights.
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Why do I shoot JPEG?
RAW can preserve some highlights if the images are close to being correctly exposed. That's why RAW is useful for Wedding photographers... as it allows more room to edit an image. Of course, those images have to be reduced to TIFFS and JPEGS eventually. The tonal values are reduced when you save as a JPEG and when you shoot with RAW, much of that data is disposed of and not all the RAW data relates to useful image data. Hence I tend to shoot with JPEG these days. Years ago I think RAW was better for professional editing. But cameras now do such a great job with processing the images into JPEGS these days that many pro DSLR users are now simply shooting JPEGS. It's a personal preference but the pressure to shoot RAW is now gone and most journalists are no longer permitted to shoot RAW any more. Most importantly, the DiGiC! Processor inside any Canon camera is now far more efficient at processing the RAW data into quality JPEGS that the average person simply isn't capable of the same level of skillful image processing themselves.
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The human eye can only perceive 10 million colors and most computer monitors can display more colors than the human eye can see. Furthermore, a 14-bit image from a camera contains far more information and color than even the best monitors are capable of displaying. You can see why there's a bit of a problem when most of the red and cyan shades can't even be displayed in a way that a human eye can read them. If you want to shoot RAW, most cameras now offer this option. The images will be bland to look at when first converted for viewing but you can then tweak them for your own preferences. When the Canon processors convert a RAW file they tend to make use of all the most important visual data so that it ends up looking quite smart.
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EOS M6 + EF-M 32mm - Taken 2 nights ago - I have my exposure dial set to -1 which sometimes results in a slightly darker image from the camera. Here's the Before and After example. The image on the left is a JPEG from my camera. The one on the right is with the shadows lifted slightly. A full edit was applied to the one on the right with my preferred Lightroom and Photoshop settings (as per above). Note the the colors are generally quite accurate.
EOS M6 + EF 100-400mmL II lens - The image on the right has been edited in both Lightroom and Photoshop. But you wouldn't notice this unless I pointed it out. The image on the left is straight out of the camera with no image processing at all.
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If you look at the two last images directly above, you'll see that I really needed to lift the shadows in the shot with the Calamari because the dimly lit restaurant combined with my camera settings resulted in a decent image that simply needed the shadows lifted slightly. The shot with the lizard below was almost perfect straight out of the camera. But for the lizard you'll see slightly more vivid colors in the background and slightly less noise. That's generally all I have to do. I'd rather under-expose than over-expose.
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But it's nice to get pleasant images straight out of the camera. I imagine that if you didn't want to edit your images afterwards you could increase saturation and exposure using your camera's User Defined settings. Either way, there's room to accommodate everyone's preferences.
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I hope this helps!
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Regards,
Marco Nero.
