Photo Editing Workflow WHY EDITING Modern digital photography is a complex process, which starts with the Photographer s Eye, that is, their observational ability, it continues with photo session preparations, the actual shooting, and finally with post-production. A digital photo is not completed until it is output in some format, suitable for our purposes (e.g., print, web or screen). Editing is therefore a key step in the process of creating our images, and, in order to ensure it is done properly, it should follow at least some basic principles and steps. WHAT WE NEED FOR EDITING Digital photo editing is done through specific software, which varies in complexity, sophistication and functions according to the main purposes it needs to achieve. Although the market is full of programs for every possible platform and operating system, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM CC is generally considered one of the best, if not the best photo editing software at the moment. Other notable photo editing software includes DxO Optics Pro, Affinity Photo, PaintShop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Macphun Luminar and others. HOW TO EDIT Photo editing can be done in several ways, and it much depends on the photographer s vision, what kind of atmosphere and mood they intend to convey, and what kind of message they want to communicate. Therefore, the approach could be varied, and different photographers may have different ideas as to how to proceed. As a premise, however, it is always true that the better a photograph is taken in terms of composition, framing, exposure, the less work will be necessary in post-production. So, the advice is: take your photos as well as possible, because this will save you time and energy later! Moreover, whatever adjustment we apply, it is always a good idea to apply it sparingly and in small
increases. Think of adjustments like applying make-up. Too little may not make the face beautiful. Too much and you will look like a clown. So, SMALL MOVES! STEP 1 SOFTWARE SETUP Assuming that we edit our photos in the most common situation, that is, WITHOUT a calibrated screen, we can however set up our workspace in the editing software in order to help with the editing process. In particular, the background of the software should possibly be changed into MEDIUM GRAY, to help with a more accurate perception of the colors. STEP 2 FILE IMPORTING We examine only the case of editing one photo at a time. However, software like Lightroom, Adobe Bridge and others allow for the categorization, ordering and tagging of the photos, so to make retrieval, assessment and editing much faster and easier. This is especially useful when the photos start to be in the order of hundreds if not thousands. Assuming we have shot our images in a RAW uncompressed file format, we need to import the file into our editing software. JPEG or other compressed format can be still used, but the ability of editing and fixing mistakes without causing a significant decay in the overall quality is noticeably compromised. STEP 3 METADATA ANALYSIS Something that normally people disregard is the analysis of the metadata. Every camera records certain information about the images, like the exposure settings, the type and focal length of the lens used, and so on. We can take advantage of this information to understand how the photo was taken and whether there are potential technical problems connected to the exposure. We can use these data to also learn from our mistakes and correct them in the next shooting session. 2
STEP 4 HISTOGRAM ANALYSIS Modern digital cameras, as well as editing software, allow us to visualize what is called the histogram, a graph that represents what the camera has recorded in terms of tones of gray (from solid black 0 to pure white 255). The graph reports the tone range on the X Axis, and how much of the area of photo is recorded in each of the tones (measured in pixels) on the Y Axis. Overall, the histogram represents the exposure of the image. The tonal range much depends on the camera sensor, and different models and brands may have different tonal range. The histogram can be roughly divided into 4 or 5 areas, corresponding to different ranges of tones, from very dark to very light. Analyzing the shape of the histogram, as well as possible gaps in it, can tell us much about the exposure of the photo, and how to edit in order to correct eventual exposure mistakes. STEP 5 RAW DEVELOPMENT If our images are in RAW format, usually when we launch an Adobe product, we first encounter an app called Adobe Camera RAW, which is necessary for us to develop the raw file into something we can then use in other editing software (every camera maker has their own RAW file developing app. Canon, for example, uses DPP, Digital Photo Professional). The corrections we can make at this stage should be quite small. Lightroom allows us to edit the RAW file directly without the need of a separate stage with Camera RAW. STEP 6 BASIC EDITING Not every image needs every editing step. It much depends on the starting technical quality of the image and on the photographer s vision. However, in order to improve the quality of the image and to add effects, something can be done in each of the editing apps we mentioned above. The steps below affect the image as a whole, but in certain cases some local adjustments can be still done. 3
The basic editing steps can be: CROP / STRAIGHTEN FIX LENS DISTORTION ADJUST EXPOSURE and TONES ADJUST WHITE BALANCE and COLOR APPLY NOISE REDUCTION APPLY SHARPENING APPLY CREATIVE FILTERS Crop/straighten is necessary when we want to frame our image in a more effective and pleasant way, for example by getting rid of useless areas of the picture, reframing according to the rule of thirds, or straighten the horizon when we take photos of landscapes. We may also want to fix the perspective in cases when the image looks not natural because of the angle of view we have adopted. Every lens, to some extent and to various levels, introduces some distortion in the image. Modern software allows for automatic correction of such distortions, by recognizing the lens used from the metadata of the shot and by applying the corresponding perspective corrections. This ensures a more natural looking image. Exposure adjustment is a critical step in the editing process, and how it is performed and to which extent, greatly depends on how the image was shot in the first place. The histogram can provide useful information on how to intervene in this type of adjustment. The same goes for contrast (the variation between light and dark tones, which determines how much impact or punch our image is going to have) / highlight / shadow adjustments. A useful and powerful tool to act on such aspects of the image is the CURVE tool, which both Lightroom and Photoshop make available. Once we have adjusted the tonal aspects of the image, we can move to adjusting color, if and when needed. Besides the case when we may want to convert our image into black and white, white balance should normally have the priority. Unless we introduce intentionally some color cast during our shooting, for example by using specific filters/settings/exposure compensation, we normally 4
want that colors look accurate, black looks black and white looks white, and not a kind of yellow or blue. Other color adjustments can be then applied, in particular Saturation and Vibrance. These two settings affect how pure and vivid the image colors appear, but there is a specific difference between them and they should not be confused. Increasing saturation means that ALL the colors in the image receive a boost, and increase in purity. This can cause some of these colors to clip and become oversaturated, making the image lose details in those areas or to make them look unnatural (e.g., skintones). Vibrance is a sort of intelligent tool. It gives more intensity to muted colors but it leaves those who are already well saturated as they were. Vibrance usually preserves skintones. Every image presents a certain amount of noise, which is naturally introduced by the camera sensor and by the specific exposure settings, in particular the ISO value. In most cases, sparingly using the related noise reduction controls is sufficient to clean up the image to a satisfactory level. In specific cases, like high- ISO photos, night photos, greatly underexposed photos, noise and grain can appear in the image in a very noticeable way, significantly reducing its quality and requiring an aggressive noise reduction. Lightroom allows for reducing two types of noise, luminance and chrominance noise. Luminance is grayscale noise, it is what makes an image look grainy. Chrominance (or chroma) noise is color noise, visible in an image in the form of colored artifacts. In Lightroom these two settings need to be played with in order to obtain the best result for the image we are editing. Lightroom, and in a different way Photoshop, allow for sharpening the images, which is the process by which an image receives contrast at the edge level. This type of sharpening is subjective and it is mostly assessed through human sight. Both these apps have a few controls on which we can act, to adjust sharpness. Lightroom controls Amount (how much sharpening), Radius (how wide the adjustment acts. Images with many fine details require lower radius, viceversa the radius can be increased) Detail (lower values sharpen edges and remove blurring, higher values emphasize texture) and Masking (0 equals to sharpening the whole image equally, 100 means sharpening mostly the areas around the stronger edges). 5
We may want to apply some filters or creative effects to give our images particular moods and atmospheres. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have some preset filters that can be used to this purpose, and others can be found online for free. Nik Collection is a high-quality addition to these apps, and contains lots of filters and controls to adjust our images in the most creative ways. We can also process the image in Lightroom first and then move onto other apps, like Photoshop for further processing. STEP 7 FILE OUTPUT Once we have obtained an image we are happy with, it is time to finish it up and save it for the use we intend to make of it. Two steps here could be: ASSIGN PROFILE EXPORT / SAVE AS Every image we work with in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom receives a color profile (or color space) which defines the range (or gamut) of colors that the software (and possibly the screen) is able to visualize. Normally Photoshop and Lightroom work with Adobe 1998 color space, but this profile is too sophisticated for ordinary computer screens and for the web and therefore it cannot be correctly used and visualized. So, if we plan on using our photos online and visualize them on computer screens, we need to change the color profile, and assign a different one to our image. Usually we will assign the RGB profile. If our purpose is to print our images, then a longer procedure needs to be performed, which includes soft proofing, that is, visualizing on screen how the image will look like assuming we print it on certain devices. Finally, our image will need to be saved. According to what we are going to do with it, we may choose different formats among those available. For normal web/online/screen use a standard Jpeg will be sufficient. 6