It sounds like you have a good grasp of the RAW conversion process. My main suggestion would be to use the Sharpness slider carefully. A setting between 75 and 100 is a lot of sharpening. Blow your image up to 100% or 200% when sharpening to see what it does to the edges and transition areas. I find that I usually can't go above 65 without causing damage and frequently end up in the 50s. You're also applying even more sharpening after conversion. Without a doubt, you're oversharpening. This will tend to significantly reduce the plasticity of the image in that the transition areas will be "notchy" or abrupt. I also think that if you get everything right with exposure, brightness, shadows, and contrast before you convert, you shouldn't often have to fuss with curves or limites. I sometimes add a minor tweak after processing, usually just as a final contrast adjustment with the rgb curve, but most of the time the RAW converter gets it right. Too much is frequently too much.
> Hi! > > > It behooves Boris to define his workflow to some degree. > > Shel, I've no idea what "behooves" is, but I suspect I know what you're > asking of me anyway. So here goes. I'll try to be as detailed as I can > so prepare for rather long message. > > 1. I shoot RAW only. Color balance is almost always set to automatic. My > camera is set to: Saturation: 0, Contrast: -1, Sharpening: +1. I've been > told once that Contrast -1 slightly improves the sensitivity range. I > use Sharpening +1 because it seems the images coming from camera are > more on the soft side than I would accept. > > 2. I process with Adobe PhotoShop Elements 3. So, for instance, > perspective correction through crop seems to be out of my reach. > > 3. When I process I adopt some of the technique suggested by Rob Studdert: > > a. I would start with "As Shot" color balance and work towards better > color rendition if I disagree with "As Shot" values. Very often for > outdoors shot I would end up with about 5000 K and -5 - -15 Tint. > > b. Then I would change exposure in such a way that no areas of the shot > are marked as blown out highlights. > > c. Then I would play with shadows so that I wouldn't have any areas > marked as blocked shadows. Here I would also see that my general > contrast is high enough. So I usually tend to make shadows darker. > > d. Then I would set brightness as to compensate for potential global > darkening which was caused in b. above. > > e. Finally I would usually increase contrast a little via contrast control. > > f. If I want to go b/w I might set saturation to -100. Usually I leave > it at 100. That's because now I have Channel Mixer enabled via set of > Earthbound light Effects package. > > g. Finally I would set luminance smoothing to 0 almost always. Could be > I am mistaken here. I simply found that if luminance smoothing is more > than 0, picture seems to loose its sharpness... > > h. Then I would set sharpening to 75-100. And finally color noise > reduction I usually set to 0. That's because I rarely shoot in > low-key/underexposure situations. So I don't need this, I think. Again, > it could be I am mistaken with sharpness. As per Rob's suggestions, I > would always enlarge a portion of image to examine it. If I see clearly > that sharpening introduced artifacts, I would lower the sharpening level... > > All together, from reviewing the above process it seems that I might be > overdoing sharpening a little... > > Also I usually process in 8 bit. Which could be wrong, but in Elements I > have to be 8 bit, and also for printing I have to provide a JPEG file > - so 8 bit is kind of forced on me. > > Now, to post-processing itself. > > 1. If I have to crop, I would usually start with cropping to standard > size, such as 45x30 or 40x30 or 30x30 (all centimeters of course). I > would set the resolution to 200 or 300 dpi so that when I crop I would > also res up for final size. If my crop size is non-standard, I would not > res up. > > 2. I would then either apply Curves or more often perform Levels > correction. Very rarely I would need to use Selective Color or > Hue/Saturation to fix up the colors. > > 3. Finally I would use High Pass filter to sharpen it even more. > Recently I learned that I don't have to always Overlay the resulting > layer. I may use "Vivid Light" or "Soft Light" which gives more > interesting results. Also I may push the high pass filter to higher > values of threshold, such as 5 or even 10. Then I would Gaussian Blur it > before merging it with the original layer. Could be this is a wrong idea > all together. > > 4. As for USM, even technique suggested by M Reichmann from Luminous > Landscape, which is quite mild, is still too harsh for me. > > That would be it. I would always save my files for print at highest > possible quality level of JPEG. Often though I use progressive > optimization option. It seems to give slightly smaller sizes without > sacrificing quality. > > Finally, the "For Web" part. Here it could be I am doing more mistakes. > > 1. I would resize my image by one step. So I would set resolution to 72 > dpi and either width to 700 pixels or height to 640 pixels. That is the > most comfortable size for me to keep editing at 100% view ratio. > > 2. Usually the resized image is softer than the original. So I would > High Pass sharpen it at 0.25 or 0.3 (at most 0.5) threshold. > > 3. Finally I would apply my standard frame (10 pixels white/black, 1 > pixel black/white, and 20 pixels white/black). > > 4. When I am saving my image I wouldn't use "Save for web" (may be big > mistake), I'd simply use Save As and set image quality to 7-10 out of > 12. My ultimate goal would be to obtain an image which is not larger > than 100 Kb. Sometimes, I cannot do it. Then I would save it at maximum > quality. Then I would re-open it in IrfanView and save from there at 80% > of original quality. Very often, that would result in smaller image. > > That would be it. > > Now, if you see that I am doing something wrongly, please indicate how > exactly I can correct myself. Then I could try this and learn. > > Finally, to make it crystal clear: I am not abandoning Pentax. Not after > spending few years as a member of this club :). > > Boris >
