> I fear that many are used only to colour neg these days or have relied on
> camera auto for a long time and perhaps may not naturally think about
> white balance or luminance range.
THat is indeed one of the biggest part of the problem: the photographers do
not know their Digicams in detail, hence the need for lots of post
processing time. Also those who were doing mistakes with their lighting
schemes are watching the penalty in their results, since digital forces you
to do things beter, or should iI just say , just right.
I have read tons of posts with Wed photogs complaining about digital, and it
turned out to be in most of the cases that many just "jumped" one day into
buying and using the camera, with no previous playing and toying with it
while still shooting film and this is by far the best approach to embrace
digital without a bit of problems, this is , assuming your are a curious
person who is enjoying a new set of toys, while not compromising your
results to your clients, right until you are fully confident with what you
are doing. In the meantime, you have film to back up your name and
reputation.
After you get to learn your camera and adjust your settings to get during
the shooting as close as possible to what you like, then post procesing
takes little time.
What many people call workarounds could be solved with a good workflow( Not
WorkSlow) and here is one tip I have seen no one report anywhere for
shooting RAW in weddings,events and the like( although I am sure many might
be using this:
Get a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements ( it even also works in OS9, and in
old PC's so you don't even have to upgrade to the top and more expensive
equipments during your start up. "playing" process) and install the (now old
) ACR version 1.0 Plugin.
I don't understand why Adobe did bother into embedding a standard menu for
automated batch processsing for RAW files in ELements and did not do it in
PS. I know, I know there are workarounds with home made Actions,
Dr,Brown's scripts etc, but Photoshop Elements provides a basic menu,
identical to batch process actions in PS, but includes the option of dealing
with the raw data directly, no hassles, no misteries. THis is like
make-simple-raw-processing-faster-than -jpeg-processing-dream come true.
A combined set of actions or Droplets take care of the final steps, like
preparing a folder with tiff files, another with HiRes jpegs, other with
LowRes jpegs for e-mail,webgallery, etc, this all while you do other stuff
like reading this list or responding to private emails or having more fun
than all of this. Automation is key to not wasting our lives in front of our
computers.
Events, social shootings, weddings, runways, and the like lend themselves
for this automation and those who make their living on these areas and don't
wanna spend more time at the comp, should master this option.
THe point is, that Elements only works in 8 bit files, ( not 16) but this
supposed handicap make the app just perfect for the fast shooter who should
not want to go into shooting jpeg due to severe changes of lighting
conditions ,etc, and without the load of work asociated with dealing with 16
bits images in massive numbers, and of course, assuming no major tweaks are
to be expected on the resulting files.
Many will find it very useful for studio situations (portraits) when lights
do not change all that much, since you can batch process dozens of images in
minutes.
A properly adjusted camera, and a properly adjusted Camera Raw "customised"
Default Setting will lead to little or almost no Photoshop time at
all.This solution is just ideal for this segment of commercial shooters.
I "fell" into PS Elements when a friend bought a scanner and it included an
OEM installer of this app. He offered it to me, since he uses PS all the
time, and I just installed it out of curiosity, finding out this tiny bit of
info that may be very useful to several colleagues who are still struggling
to get consistent results from their newly acquired digital cameras. I now
keep this app installed since now I prefer to shoot even my vacation
snapshots in RAW.
Best
Jorge Parra Photography
APA / EP
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http://JorgeParra.com/
http://TheStylePortfolios.com/
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