A Creative Raw Workflow w/ Sharpening

[jfrancho]

Or "My anal sharpening methods with a little bit of raw workflow thrown in."

I originally posted this elsewhere, but I figured it would be useful here as well.

I took this picture using my 20D, Tamron 28-300 f/3.5-6.3 at 135mm 1/250 s. @ f/6.3 ISO 400 using my 430EX with FEC set to +2/3. I then ran it through ACR at all the default settings (not auto!), resized using bicubic sharper, converted to sRGB, 8 bit mode, and saved as a jpeg. Pretty simple workflow here. Not a bad image either.



It is a little flat, and even though I used ISO 400, I'm not sure I like the background. The Tammy is not renown for great bokeh. So I decided to go for maximum pop. Here are the new, edited ACR settings stripped directly from the .xmp file - even though it's XML, most can figure it out.

 <crs:Temperature>5850</crs:Temperature>
 <crs:Tint>+20</crs:Tint>
 <crs:Exposure>+0.30</crs:Exposure>
 <crs:Shadows>53</crs:Shadows>
 <crs:Brightness>93</crs:Brightness>
 <crs:Contrast>+20</crs:Contrast>
 <crs:Saturation>0</crs:Saturation>
 <crs:Sharpness>1</crs:Sharpness>
 <crs:LuminanceSmoothing>10</crs:LuminanceSmoothing>
 <crs:ColorNoiseReduction>4</crs:ColorNoiseReduction>
 <crs:ChromaticAberrationR>+37</crs:ChromaticAberrationR>
 <crs:ChromaticAberrationB>+55</crs:ChromaticAberrationB>
 <crs:VignetteAmount>-100</crs:VignetteAmount>
 <crs:VignetteMidpoint>50</crs:VignetteMidpoint>
 <crs:ShadowTint>0</crs:ShadowTint>
 <crs:RedHue>0</crs:RedHue>
 <crs:RedSaturation>0</crs:RedSaturation>
 <crs:GreenHue>0</crs:GreenHue>
 <crs:GreenSaturation>0</crs:GreenSaturation>
 <crs:BlueHue>0</crs:BlueHue>
 <crs:BlueSaturation>0</crs:BlueSaturation>
 <crs:ToneCurveName>Strong Contrast</crs:ToneCurveName>

The color temp and calibration were totally subjective decisions, as were many other settings. Note that I once I killed the background completely using the Shadows slider (being careful not to clip too much detail in the flower!) I had some CA issues that were very noticeable. The Tammy seems to make a lot of this junk. Luckily ACR has some great CA removal tools built in. I use the Ctrl-click method while zoomed all the way in to get these two sliders working in tandem to remove most of the CA. Next I went after the noise. I don't like aggressive NR in ACR, though very conservative settings can get rid of most of the blue and red blobs you'll see at 400%. A little luminance smoothing goes a long way when you sharpen later. Once I did all I could in ACR, I saved it as a 16 bit .psd in Prophoto RGB. If you have to ask why ProPhoto, try sRGB instead.

Once I opened the .psd in Photoshop proper, I went about creating surface masks for use with Noise Ninja to take fine control of noise removal. I like to use the Pro Mask Tookit script from the The Light's Right Studio. It builds the masks using an 8-bit copy of the background image, so it works pretty quickly. After creating several different mask selections, I decided that a combination of narrow width highlights mask and medium width midtones mask would protect most of the details in the flower highlights and let Noise Ninja do it's thing on the shadows. I copied the layer and created a layer mask with the selections. There were a couple spots in the mask that were a little goofy, so "painted them in" using my Wacom pad and the brush tool, set to a low opacity, in PS. Then I ran Noise Ninja, letting it profile the image. I turned the first three sliders for Strength, Smoothness, and Contrast down to 7. I don't use USM in NN, so those were disabled. Using NN with the surface mask zapped most of the ugly noise out of the shadows and smoothed out some of water droplets, all without blurring the details.

Then I used TLR's Sharpening scripts for capture sharpening. This just "defuzzes" the softness caused by anti-aliasing in the camera and noise removal in ACR. I used the enhanced edge mask mode to protect all that work I did previously to rid the image of noise. By using masks this way, NR and sharpening don't overlap and are less destructive. At this point, I sometimes flatten the image, and add "pop" with a curves adjustment in L*a*b mode. This image needed no pop, so I cranked ahead with some TLR Creative Sharpening. I used just about every option in the script, since you can "paint in" the amount of sharpening using the brush tool on the layer mask. Surface sharpening really added some nice contrast to the water droplets here.

Now, I had to decide where my workflow was going to take me. It is at this point that the workflow diverges, based on output and output size. I flatten and save a copy of this file in the archive. Since I chose to share this experience, I need to "WEBERIZE" it. The first thing I do resize the image to 800x533 px. I used bicubic sharper for this, because it just looked better that way. Another subjective decision. Once it was resized, it needed some sharpening to create the illusion of sharpness on the web. High Pass Filter is a great method for this. Luckily, TLR has a script for this (sound like an infomercial yet? - no, I'm not on Mitch's payroll). I set it for 800 px. but it was too harsh, so went back and tried in "expert" mode. All I had to do was lower the radius of the High Pass filter to 0.2 for the lightness layer.

Almost there. The picture is done in my book, but it isn't ready for the web. I first convert to sRGB colorspace, and then converted to 8 bit mode. Now I can save it as a .jpg quality-12 and upload to my hosting site to share it with you.

Here it is:



I'll probably get a print made of this as well, but that's another workflow.

I should add that the point of this is to demonstrate that the real value with using raw format is not always a safety net to rescue a bad exposure, but to have the ability to make creative decisions after the capture is made. I could have gone back and retake the shot using ISO 100, and possibly a black mattboard for a background, but it has been in the mid 90s and these irises are done . However, I do have some gigantic Japanese rusty irises that are in full bloom that I might have to get .

[JDArt]

Nice post. You've demonstrated well the often detailed (and agonizing) steps that we have to go through to take an image from "digital negative" to final product.

You conclude by saying that the product demonstrates the real value of RAW. No doubt. But I have taken a jpeg and worked this kind of magic many times, adjusting levels, curves, shadows, etc., to obtain similar results.

[jfrancho]

Thanks. Sure you can do this with a .jpg too, but I didn't take the picture in .jpg mode. Curves, Levels, Shadows and Highlights all take per image adjustment, and can be tricky to some. I marvel at what some particularly skilled photographers can do in .jpg mode, with minimal processing, under tremendous deadlines. Working in a raw converter is inherently non destructive, and very intuitive. Everything done to this image beyond the raw setup is just running simple scripts and plu-ins - most of the advanced work is done for you by the script and plug-in authors. Also, how many tutorials are there out there that show the most painful process of cutting a subject from a picture to put it on a new background. Not an easy proposition for a Photoshop neophyte. In reality, if I had any forethought, or just chimped the image in camera, I wouldn't have needed the radical ACR settings. But that was the point, a decent exposure, captured in raw format will yield more possibilities than a poorly exposed image "rescued" in raw. Also, I understand the popularity of using the film analogy when referring to raw format as a "digital negative," but I can't help but to think it ismore than a neg. It's much less restrictive than a film neg in that the user doesn't even need to choose what film they're going to load in the camera. It's more like a generic slide format. That isn't very catchy, though. I see a lot so called "raw-shooters" that either use default or auto settings in raw, or just plain figure the latitude offered by the format is an remedy for poor photographic skills. No amount of intimate PS knowledge will replace the ability to make a decent exposure.

[jfrancho]

Here are some crops showing the difference my goofy NR/sharpening process makes. It's subtle, but I think it's what gives it the most pop.

Here is where I took the crop:


Here is the side by side, sharpened is on the right:


The crops were taken from the full size image. The sharpened crop was taken after the creative sharpening step. I didn't take it from the output step because that image had already been resized and is represented at 100% in the inital post above.

[mavb]

Great post.
Thanks,Mark

[macmaam]

Thanks for sharing such detailed information about your process. You certainly achieved impressive results. It's hard to believe all that information was in the original, just waiting to be brought out.

I'm still shooting in JPG, 'cuz i can't get ACR to work with CS, and i'm waiting to upgrade to CS3, next spring. Canon's RAW converter is just way too d*** slow. I can see i have a lot of learning ahead of me--maybe my photographic attempts will be worth the effort by then.

You said preparing for print is another process. Some day when you're just idling, i'd be interested in hearing that.

Why did you convert to ProPhoto or sRGB rather than your monitor space, after your first conversion?

[jfrancho]

Never convert to the monitor profile, since that describes how the monitor behaves. The working color space is the pallet. Think of it this way, you choose a pallet of color, your working color space, and the monitor profile tells the monitor how to display the colors. I use Prophoto based on experience, and this color space has a large gamut that may have small benefits when editing and adjusting during the process. Always remember to convert to new color spaces in 16 bpc mode, as this will reduce posturization, or banding.

BTW, if you want to get ACR to work with your Rebel XT, try this:

Download and install ACR v. 2.4 per the instructions.
Download ACR 3.4 and DNG Converter bundle.
Just extract the DNG Converter to your desktop and discard ACR 3.4.
Run the DNG Converter on your .cr2 raw files to create .dng files.
The .dng files should open in ACR 2.4 for Photoshop CS.

[macmaam]

SHEEEESH! I have read nearly everything available on monitor calibrating. How did i happen to miss that extremely important point? Maybe now, i can stop reading and have the results i'm looking for. But, now i'm confused on what to DO with my monitor profile, and i bet i have PS completely gunked up.

Excellent tip on getting ACR to work. I'm going to check that out ASAP. A million thanks!

[jfrancho]

The monitor calibration kit should have some sort of "Profile Loader" that runs at startup. Otherwise, you would go into your display options, and set it there. As far as PS color settings, here is the way mine is set up:


You may want to check all three boxes under Color Management Policies, while you get the hang of color management.

[macmaam]

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO! Look at me, in Adobe Camera Raw! I owe you a steak dinner.

Thanks, also, for the PS settings. I thought i DID have the hang of color management, at least to the extent that i currently use it, but i have been even more wrong than this. My settings are pretty similar to yours, except that i set my monitor profile as the working space. I've changed it, now. I don't print much, and most of my stuff has come back from the lab with good color, just a little flat from what i thought it should be. Maybe this will iron that out.

[macmaam]

Do you happen to still have the version that came out of ACR, before you worked on it in PS?

[jfrancho]

Originally Posted by macmaam

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO! Look at me, in Adobe Camera Raw! I owe you a steak dinner.

Thanks, also, for the PS settings. I thought i DID have the hang of color management, at least to the extent that i currently use it, but i have been even more wrong than this. My settings are pretty similar to yours, except that i set my monitor profile as the working space. I've changed it, now. I don't print much, and most of my stuff has come back from the lab with good color, just a little flat from what i thought it should be. Maybe this will iron that out.

I don't print ANY myself. I leave that up to the lab. mPix and WHCC both do an excellent job.

Originally Posted by macmaam

Do you happen to still have the version that came out of ACR, before you worked on it in PS?

I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean with the raw adjustments, but no sharpening and noise removal? It would be really hard to portray that on the web, since resizing and compressing invariably adds a little bit of sharpness. The side by side crops above pretty much show the difference. It isn't a big difference, but it's enough to take it from a nice shot to wow.

[macmaam]

Or, WOWOWOW!

Yes, that is what i meant. I am not seeing much result from anything i do in the Detail tab; just very slight changes if i zoom in almost to pixel level. i guess i'll just leave it at the defaults, and continue working through your tutorial--not necessarily to duplicate your results, but more to understand what the process does.

[jfrancho]

In the detail tab, I have sharpening set to "Preview Only," in the preferences. It only takes very minute amounts Color Noise Reduction and Luminance Smoothing to get good results. While the view is set at 400%, choose a a shadow region of the picture. click in the value box for Color Noise Reduction, and use the up arrow to increase the NR. Anything more than 10 here, and you're not helping the image. I will go just a bit higher, up to 20, for smoothing. You really have to find the right part of the image where the noise is noticable at 400%. This is really nitpicking stuff, though. I wouldn't dream of custome tuning 300 client images like this. For that, I use a default setting of 10 for smoothness, and 3 for noise reduction. Before everybody cries out, "But I shot at ISO 100, there isn't any noise," let me see the raw file. I'll find some noise. It's there.

Another fast tip. Change you ACR defaults:
White balance: As Shot
Exposure: 0
Shadows: 0
Contrast: +25
Brightness: +50
Saturation: 0

Details:
Sharpening: 0
Luminance Smoothing: +10
Color Noise Reduction: +3

Calibration: 0's all the way down. If you have a GTM ColorChecker Card, you can build your own calibration profiles, but that's another post.

You should be able to "Save New Camera Defaults..." from the little triangle flyout menu to the right of the White Bal. droplist.

[ascending Phoenix]