How Do You (or U) Do Raw?
Submitted by colleen on 8 August 2008 - 9:47am.
Hey, dekeCommunity. Colleen here coming to you from the beautiful Sierras near Lake Tahoe, California. Beautiful, but limited connectivity (for which I am primarily grateful). But that means no uploading of pretty photographs either. You'll just have to trust me on the beauty part. Speaking of which, I've been shooting away with this week, both with my DSLR and my compact camera, a Panasonic LX2, which happens to shoot in RAW format (for Panasonic, that's actually the file extention—.RAW). I'm loaded up with the new Lightroom 2 and a copy of Apple's photo processing and management tool, Aperture, and I'm wondering what the citizens of dekeWorld use to process raw files. Do you use Lightroom or Aperture? Or do you have a workflow that functions nicely with Bridge/ACR/Photoshop? When I get back, I'll have some work to do on my vacation photos, so enquiring minds want to know, especially if there are reasons/scenarios that call for one tool or another.
BTW, one nice improvement I've seen in Lighroom 2 so far is that for my Panasonic shots, which automatically give me RAW+JPEG, Lightroom now only shows one thumbnail. In the previous version, there was a separate RAW and JPEG entry for every image. This little update is much tidier. Of course, my shots at the lake yesterday were all taken before I realized I had the ISO set to 1600, so you'll never see those. But at least I didn't have to see the dang things twice over.
Comments
Thanks, deke
When I tried it through their site via the shopping channels, it wouldn't let me get very far because of the credit card issue and my location in the world - so if I can send a physical cheque to a physical place, then I might just win.
Cheers! :-D
By the way...
How does one go about purchasing the DVDs if one has no credit card - which rules out Amazon.com and Lynda.com for us credit cardless overseaers :(
Is there somewhere we can send a international money order thingy to? And who would the money order be made out to?
info@lynda.com
Whoever answers that should be able to point you in the right direction.
Tell them I sent you.
Edit - never mind
I just saw a blindingly obvious solution. Sorry, sorry - I've been running on too much caffeine and too little sleep for too long, methinks. I need a holiday!
RAW workflow
i shoot in large jpg mode with a canon xsi; my process is as follows:
1) via bridge, open jpegs in ACR.
2) from ACR, open in PS.
3) convert to LAB
4) de-noise as needed
5) levels as needed
6) any additional adjustments (hue/sat, cleanup, etc)
7) sharpen as needed
8) flatten to jpg
9) move to Aperture for final image grouping, storage, etc
Re: Lightroom WTF...pardon, FTW
Call me a traditionalist and a conservative, but... well actually I am. But I just can't wrap my mind around the need for yet another piece of software that does everything a combination of Bridge and Photoshop already does.
File management - check!
Image editing - check!
When I first heard of Lightroom, my first question was "OK, why?".
Perhaps it's the point of keeping my head in the sand with the current trends, and I'm the first one to admit that. But I am at a point of getting darn right curious as to what magical features would make it worth my pennies investing in yet another piece of software.
Obviously you're sold on it. Perhaps if you could share with me as to why, I'll have a better idea. Hey, all these users can't be wrong, right?
__________________________________________________
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?
Lightroom vs Bridge/ACR/Photoshop
I think many people ask the same question, Flyboy, especially with Lightroom's $299 price tag. But there are differences of course. The Library module in Lightroom has some sophisticated abilities to virtually group images, rather than just view them your already existing file structure. The Develop module is has some targeted and localized adjustment features that you don't have in Camera Raw. You don't have to open all your images in Photoshop either (just the few that need or will benefit from it). And many people are intimidated by Photoshop's complex and somewhat labrynthian set of menus and controls.
Then there are the output modules, which actually allow for efficiently moving your images to the Web, to a Slideshow, or to Print. (I'm a little perplexed though by Adobe's lack of read update to the Slideshow module, with PDF or export of individual slides still being the only options. Why can't I make a SWF file?) Lightroom 2's Print module has some terrific layout-like features that allow for the creation of Photo Packages that go well beyond your standard contact sheet features in Bridge/Photoshop.
And of course, everything you do in Lightroom, up until output, is non-destructive saved-instruction-set editing, meaning you're not creating duplicates of your images or making irrevocable changes to your originals.
Mikkel Aaland, who wrote both O'Reilly's Camera RAW book and our Lightroom Adventure book, calls Lightroom a sportscar (fast and beautiful) and Bridge/ACR/Photoshop an offroad vehicle (go anywhere and do anything, just a little less elegantly). I can see your point that for many, the sportscar feels like an extravagant splurge.
I don't know about anyone else,
but I think Adobe may, sometime in the near or distant future, ditch Bridge/ACR and replace them with Lightroom. Lightroom looks great; is very user friendly; manages files better, edits files better, and views/stacks/rolls files over and tickles their tummies better, than Bridge/ACR. Sure, you can do all the editing (or at the very least, most of it) in Photoshop, with the Bridge as a browser/manager - but evolution has taken hold, bro. Thank goodies! And it has done since the camera obscura. :-D
I'm pretty new to Lightroom, but I'm sold. A few podcasts as guides have helped me overcome my reluctance to embrace it, and I'm pleased. It's a keeper. And I'll be keeping my eye on those extremely talented and clever programmers at Adobe for future developments, fo'sher.
I will not rage against the light! :-)
RAW workflow
What a timely topic. For the last year I have been using lightroom which I love (have not upgraded to lightroom 2 yet). The one issue I have had with lightroom is a good workflow for problem images that need more work in Photoshop. That problem has increased for me since I have recently been using the LAB mode after going through Deke's tutorials on Lynda.com. It's amazing how easy it is to find a stunning image where there was only a rough image now that I am correcting in LAB mode.
For now my workflow is to rough out the basic color correction in Lightroom, open it in Photoshop and make it sparkle with LAB correction then save a flattened RGB version. Save the PSD file. Go back to Lightroom where I now have the original and PSD and import the flat corrected RGB and use Lightroom to make crops and export version for web, e-mail and printing.
Suddenly I have a whole lot more files to deal with and a lot more process, but I also have images that are reaching for color depths and contrasts that I have not been able to achieve before.
I'm hoping that when I'm able to upgrade to Lightroom 2, that I will be able to streamline my workflow a little.
1 step forward, 2 steps back
Until recently, I was under the impression that RGB to LAB and back is a non a destructive method. It turns out that it not. According to people like Andrew Rodney, (Scott Kelby's guest blogger Aug. 6th) it is a destructive way of the editing images, meaning that you loose information every time you go back and forth. Is that something you have noticed in your workflow?
Jan