{"id":162,"date":"2014-02-06T00:53:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T23:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phillipreeve.net\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2024-04-21T15:07:34","modified_gmt":"2024-04-21T14:07:34","slug":"how-i-create-images-part-3-postprocessing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phillipreeve.net\/blog\/how-i-create-images-part-3-postprocessing\/","title":{"rendered":"How I create Images – Part 3: Postprocessing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In party 3 of my series I will \u00a0tell you about my approach to post processing. This is my personal approach and there are many different approaches, some of them more sophisticated than mine, but I found that it works quite well for me this way.<\/p>\n

In case you haven’t read part 1 and 2 yet, here are the links:
\nHow I create Images – Part 1: looking for motifs and light
\n<\/a>How I create Images – Part 2: working with the Sony a7<\/a><\/p>\n

\"beforeAfter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I will talk about this image later, but it makes a nice intro<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I am completely self-taught, so it might be that I do things rather different than other people, or that I don\u2019t know about an important feature of LR,<\/p>\n

Software – Adobe Lightroom<\/b><\/p>\n

I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 for my archiving and image processing.
\nWhat I like about LR is that I can do everything with it, I don’t need any other software and it is tailored for photographers. And since LR 4 it offers superior control over highlights and shadows, you won’t get this level of control over your image with Photoshop.<\/p>\n

I used to use Photoshop for my processing and my archive consisted of many folders. This was super inefficient and cost me a lot of time, processing took me 2 or 3 times as long as it does today and the results weren\u2019t as good.<\/p>\n

The biggest downside of Lightroom is, that older version won’t support new cameras, you can’t for example open raw files from the a7 in LR 4, you have to upgrade to LR 5.<\/p>\n

If you are thinking about buying LR (or anything else) please use one of my Amazon links<\/strong>, it won’t cost you anything and I will earn a small commission. Most people will sell you an E-book for$25 to tell you about their LR workflow, I do it for free.
\nAmazon.de<\/a><\/p>\n

Import and Image selection<\/b><\/p>\n

The first step is to import my images to LR, this is a strange concept for anyone who hasn’t used it before. LR will store you images somewhere on your hard drive and it will generate previews of your Raw files (I haven’t mentioned it before but I am shooting raw only). It will always keep your originals and never touch them. To get a processed image from LR you have to export it. This concept is strange at the beginning but after I got used to it I realized the benefits of this system.<\/p>\n

Okay, now let\u2019s select the images. I usually do this in 3 rounds.
\nI have read about much more sophisticated LR workflows, mine is rather basic but it works well for my needs.<\/p>\n

Round one: rejecting and selecting
\n<\/b>After the import has finished I start looking through my images. In this first round an image will either get rejected (shift + x on the keyboard), be marked with one star (1) or I won\u2019t do anything with it.
\nI reject those pictures which are clearly not worth to keep because they are bad pictures or because they aren\u2019t sharp enough because I messed something up.
\nI mark those pictures with a 1 which have some potential, but I don\u2019t process them yet and always stay in library mode. Sometimes there are images were it is clear that they have potential, those will be marked with two stars.
\nMost images are neither rejected nor rated as 1 star.
\n\"Catalogue\"<\/a> this is how my library usually looks after round 1<\/em><\/p>\n

Round two: processing and further selection<\/b><\/p>\n

After I have reviewed all the images I filter my images so that only those with at least one star are displayed.
\n\"oneStar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I switch to Develop mode and start my post processing(pp) usually by applying a preset.
\nIf I see, that an image looks good after pp I will rate it as a 2. If it doesn\u2019t it will either be downgraded to 0 stars or not.
\nI usually spend less than a minute processing a single image; most often I do nothing more than applying a preset.<\/p>\n

Round three: final selection and export<\/b><\/p>\n

Now I change back to library mode and apply a two stars and higher filter, so only pictures which are rated two stars or higher are displayed.<\/p>\n

It often happens that I have 2 similar pictures, usually I will downgrade the worse one of them to 1 star.<\/p>\n

I will also rate truly exceptional images with 3 or more stars, but this happens really rarely.<\/p>\n

The final step is to export my pictures. The export settings depend on what I want to do with the images, most often I just want them for web display.
\nI am not a fan of LR\u2019s sharpening, it works okay on most images but it isn\u2019t good at preserving small details, so I use a technique called step sharpening to resize my images to a width of 1280px. I will talk about resizing in depth in part 4 of this series.<\/p>\n

A helpful German guy wrote a tool which reads the exif data and writes it onto a frame which it also creates plus it will resize my images with the step-sharpening-technique. So all I have to do is to select the images I want to resize to web resolution and click export. Now I upload them to flickr and I am done.
\n\"final\"<\/a> export: the final step<\/em><\/p>\n

Postprocessing<\/h3>\n

Okay, I have written 850 words and I haven\u2019t talked about the actual post processing yet, lets start.<\/p>\n

Over the years I have developed my own style and people often tell me that they can recognize my images just by the look of them. I can tell you how I achieve my look, and I can tell you some basic techniques, but to really learn how to create good images with an individual look, you will have to process many hundred pictures before you get a good feeling for the tools provided by LR (or any other image processing program).<\/p>\n

All images are different, but there are images which need rather little attention and there are those which need quite a lot of it. I will start with an easy one.
\nUsually I would apply my standard preset and be done with it. 10 seconds. But I will walk you through it so you can understand what I am doing.<\/p>\n

Sample 1: My standard preset<\/h3>\n

\"1\"<\/a>
\nthe unedited image<\/em><\/p>\n

Contrast<\/b>
\n\"2\"<\/a>
\nThe unprocessed image looks rather flat, so I use a \u201cmedium Contrast\u201d Point curve.
\nNow the image looks punchier, but the shadows are too dark, but I will tend to them later.<\/p>\n

Whites<\/b>
\n\"3\"<\/a>
\nThis is an important slider! When you look at the histogram you can see, that the snow in the image isn\u2019t white but grey. But I want it to be bright, so I use the slider to brighten my highlights.<\/p>\n

I could also have used the exposure slider to brighten my highlights, but it would have lifted the mid tones as well and I like to keep them rather dark.<\/p>\n

With the White slider I am pushing it a little too far on purpose, some snowy areas are pure white now, I have blown the highlights.<\/p>\n

Highlights<\/b>
\n\"4\"<\/a>
\nI use the highlights slider in almost any picture because in my eyes it results in a much nicer highlights roll off. And because I have lifted the highlights a little too far with the White slider I can pull them down just a little bit now. It also affects the sky a little bit.<\/p>\n

Shadows<\/b>
\n\"5\"<\/a>
\nThe great thing about LR\u2019s shadows slider is that it only affects the shadows and not the mid tones as it used to in Version 3. When I increased the contrast the shadows got a little dark, now I will lift them just enough to have no more pure black.<\/p>\n

Vignetting
\n<\/b>
\n\"6\"<\/a>
\nI took this image at f\/1.8 with a Zeiss 1.8\/135 so there is already some natural vignetting, but in almost any of my images I add some vignetting because it helps to draw the viewer\u2019s attention to the center of the image and away from the corners.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it for this image. The result isn\u2019t that different from the starting point, but that\u2019s the case for most of my images, I want the processing to be subtle and realistic.<\/p>\n

Sample 2: Managing a high contrast scene<\/h3>\n

This is my favorite image of 2013, the scene hat a really high contrast and I have slightly overexposed it, so that some highlight detail is lost. With the A7 and its higher Dynamic Range an Zebra this wouldn\u2019t have happened.
\n\"2_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Contrast<\/b>
\n\"2_2\"<\/a>
\nAs I told you before: I always use this<\/p>\n

White Balance<\/b>
\n\"2_3\"<\/a>
\nThe image was taken only a few moments after sunrise and my default daylight white balance doesn\u2019t do this justice, so I select a warmer white balance. Cloudy is often a good starting point. \u00a0The image has a much warmer feeling to it now which suits the scene well.<\/p>\n

Shadows<\/b>
\n\"2_4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I raised the shadows to high on purpose to show you how what not to do. The darker parts of the image are lifted too much and they don\u2019t look natural to me.<\/p>\n

\"2_5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So I reduced the slider to +52 which brings some detail into the shadows, but they are still dark<\/p>\n

White<\/b>
\n\"2_7\"<\/a>
\nNow I make a Mistake: I shouldn\u2019t have used the Whites slider, because it brightens the sky too much.
\n\"2_8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Highlights<\/b>
\n\"2_9\"<\/a>
\nBecause I used the Whites slider to excessively I try to recover my highlight detail with a very high highlights setting, but I have to dial back the Whites slider a little bit as well to recovery nearly the full highlight detail.<\/p>\n

Cropping<\/b>
\n\"2_10\"<\/a>
\nIf I have the feeling that a part of the image doesn\u2019t add to it I will crop it out.
\nI think the cropped image is better balanced.<\/p>\n

Post-Crop-Vignetting <\/b>
\n\"2_11\"<\/a>
\nThe normal Vignetting slider would result in unevenly lit corners because I cropped the image, so I use the Post-Crop-Vignetting setting which factors in my cropping.<\/p>\n

Highlights II<\/b>
\n\"2_12\"<\/a>
\nI have used the highlights slider too excessively and lost the light mood because of it, so I change it to a much lower value. This results in a better overall mood and a upper right corner which is too bright in my eyes.<\/p>\n

Adjustment Brush<\/b>
\n\"2_13\"<\/a>
\nThe adjustment brush is handy for local adjustments which affect only a part of the image. I will use it to fix my upper right corner now.
\n\"2_14\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Several more before\/after samples<\/h3>\n

\"DRODark_noProcessing\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"DRODark\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP1_before\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP1_after\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP2_before\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP2_after\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP4_before\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP4_after\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP5_before\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP5_after\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP7_before\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"PP7_after\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"luchsUnbearbeitet1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"luchsBearbeitet1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This site contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using any of the links marked as affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps support the creation of future content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In party 3 of my series I will \u00a0tell you about my approach to post processing. This is my personal approach and there are many different approaches, some of them more sophisticated than mine, but I found that it works quite well for me this way. In case you haven’t read part 1 and 2 … Continue reading How I create Images – Part 3: Postprocessing<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHow I create Images - Part 3: Postprocessing - phillipreeve.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/phillipreeve.net\/blog\/how-i-create-images-part-3-postprocessing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How I create Images - Part 3: Postprocessing - phillipreeve.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In party 3 of my series I will \u00a0tell you about my approach to post processing. 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