Thanks Herb. On Oct 16, 2004, at 8:01 AM, Herb Chong wrote:
here the are plugins i use all the time.
Pictographics iCorrect EditLabPro 4.5 www.picto.com FixerLabs FocusFixer 1.3 www.fixerlabs.com Extensis Intellihance Pro 4 www.extensis.com
when necessary, i use
Reindeer Graphics Optipix 3.0 www.reindeergraphcis.com Kodak Digital ROC 1.2 www.asf.com Visual Infinity Grain Surgery 2.0 www.visinf.com
my workflow consists of
1) copying the files to the hard drive.
2) opening the folder in Thumbs+ and scanning the thumbnails.
3) i'll preview the compositions and look for dust, etc, in the images i
like using the Thumbs+ viewer. its color management isn't as good as
Photoshop, so i don't make color judgements.
4) if there are any outstanding shots, i load them into Photoshop CS and
work on them right away and save the results as Photoshop files at double
resolution (6144x4101)
5) once the outstanding shots are done, i'll go back and look for the good
shots and work on them in Photoshop CS. this will include near duplicate
compositions and any exposure bracketing. some may be saved at double
resolution and some may be saved at sensor resolution (3008x2008).
6) all off the files that have been converted to Photoshop's native format
and i place them into a Thumbs+ gallery.
7) i run a slide show of the gallery contents and evaluate the images
against each other.
8) any that don't stand up as well or are duplicates get reduced if they are
at double resolution. the ones i don't like as much this way are removed
from the gallery. i'll do 2 or 3 passes like this in a couple of minutes.
what's left gets copied into my "for printing" folder.
9) from the copies in my "for printing" folder, i make 800x600 (roughly)
thumbnails for the web and choose my final crop for 11x14, my normal print
size.
within Photoshop CS, this is what i normally do:
1) at conversion, set color balance and exposure compensation if needed. i
always convert at 6144x4101. other settings in the converter that i have
tweaked are saved as the default and used on all images.
2) reduce the resolution to 3008x2008 if there is too much noise or was
taken assuming i would crop to this size. i'll crop to a standard size more
often with birding shots where i planned this ahead of time. if the image is
slightly tilted or has some things that are distracting at the edges, i'll
do straightening and cropping.
3) run Photoshop's Auto Contrast with my particular preferences set from the
Levels tool for percent white points and black points
4) if necessary, run Shadow/Highlight
5) run EditLab Pro to correct color balance and saturation. it almost always
does the right thing with minor tweaks in saturation and nothing else. if it
gets it wrong, i usually cancel the filter and try with Photoshop's Photo
Filter and Saturation adjustments
6) run FocusFixer with my standard settings
7) convert to 8-bit/channel mode
8) run Intellihance Pro
9) save as Photoshop
unless the image is a disaster technically but has amazing content, most of
the time in Photoshop is spent in waiting for the FocusFixer filter to run.
this is the only sharpening filter i own that does a decent job of deblur.
unsharp mask is a completely different filter that doesn't deblur but does
local contrast enhancement. it is similar in some ways, but different in
others. if i didn't have to do the deblur step, it takes my about 2-3
minutes to produce a typical finished image that needs only to be cropped
for printing. the deblur filter takes about 8 minutes on the double res
image and about 2 minutes on the normal one.
the pain comes when i have to use Photoshop's clone and healing brush tools
to fix minor blemishes caused by dust, trash, other other such undesirables
that appear. that will be done after EditLab Pro and before deblur. this can
take a long time, but i have few images where it is necessary and worth it.
panoramas also take a long time, but most of it is waiting for the Pentax
batch converter to run to convert the RAW images to JPEG.
i'll use Optipix when i am blending exposures to get more dynamic range,
Digital ROC when i really need better colors and nothing else seems to work,
and Grain Surgery when i need digital noise reduction. i seldom use Digital
ROC because its color adjustments can be really weird. with auto white
balance on RAW files, i almost never need it anymore. i'll more often use
Grain Surgery to add grain to simulate film than to remove noise, but almost
never do either anyway. demos are available for all of the above and you can
try them yourself. add up the prices of these 6 plugins and you pay a pretty
penny, but they let me automate "do the right thing" to a very high degree.
Herb... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Stenquist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 7:17 AM Subject: Re: *ist D image quality-_Was -Stupid Question #999
I get it. I didn't understand what you meant by plugsin. Bery interesting. Where can I read more about these plugsins? Or were they created specifically for your system?
