Comments on: Digital Image Editing Workflow

By: BIll Pearl

BIll Pearl — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:01:01 +0000

Basic Pixel Changing Edits (PSP X2)

1. Colour Balance. Also known as white balance or light source adjustment. Adjust > Automatic Color Balance

2. Brightness and Contrast: Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Brightness/Contrast or Histogram > Gamma for more control

3. Crop and Compose: Choose the desired print proportion from the Presets menu in the Tool Options palette or do a manual cropping. (Turn on Tool Options: View > Palettes > Tool Options)

4. Sharpen the Image: Adjust > Sharpness > Unsharp Mark Try using Paint Shop Pro’s default values a try first: radius, 2; strength, 100; clipping, 5. If the result is noisy or ragged, undo the sharpening. You may need to zoom in a little to see the effect.
(Sharpening with High Pass Filter has less chance of creating the unwanted contrast halo often associated with unsharp mask (or similar))

5. Noise Reduction: Don’t bother if the picture was taken in normal lighting with a low ISO setting. But for night shots, long exposures, or ISO above 400, then there might be noisy pixels in your image. Adjust > One Step Noise Removal or Digital Camera Noise Removal for more control
Download for free from Imagenomic “Noiseware Community Edition Standalone 2.6″

After you’ve taken these initial steps, you can always make other changes, such as boosting the saturation or adjusting the colors. You might also want to add filters, perform special effects, or do some composite work by adding layers, etc.

6. Metadata: After editing and saving photos, load the files into a photo organizer and add some keywords so they’ll be easy to find. (Palettes > Organizer – Ctrl+b)

By: harold

harold — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:51:36 +0000

Should cropping, cloning, and resizing come before anything else? Don’t adjustments like contrast, etc.. affect sharpening on their own.
Where should noise reduction come in the order of process.
Do you think you should have the final composition and final size ready before actually starting any other editing due to the opposite functions working based on what the compositions is to start with instead of what it will be in the end.
harold

By: Pranav Yaddanapudi

Pranav Yaddanapudi — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:00:49 +0000

I always use freeware or open source software like PhotoScape/Paint.NET/Gimp. My workflow usually goes like this:

- set white balance if needed
- duplicating layer and blend in Multiply/Overlay mode and flatten
- duplicate layer and blend in Soft Light mode and flatten (optional)
- Apply any filters for special effects like glow/lomo/mute colors etc. (optional)
- Crop & Resize as needed and Save

I use Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa to organize my pictures and upload them to my favorite online services (Flickr/PicasaWeb).

By: AikenDrum105

AikenDrum105 — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:45:04 +0000

I use Bibble under linux as well (it is also avail for windows), but leave the images in raw (NEF) and only convert to jpg to email or give a copy to someone. Bibble is really good at batch converting / printing etc. Love it :) It’s a tasty price too..
Also worth noting – Bibble leaves the raw files unchanged, but stores a little bibble ref file alongside them with all the changes you’ve made ala WB, curves, crops etc. It means you can always go back to the original shot, and don’t have to have duplication on your HD.

By: FFred

FFred — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:46:03 +0000

My workflow is fully in Linux but the basics work with pretty much anything :
1 : Dump the PEF (RAW) files in a directory named with the date in ISO format
2 : make a blind run on the directory with Bibble to create JPEG files. Those go to a sub directory called JPEG.
3 : review the JPEGs to see which file need (or are worthy) of working on
4 : The interesting files get corrected / balanced / cropped in Bibble and go to a second directory called Export.
5 : If needed, further retouching is done with the Gimp or with the digiKam editor.
6 : Files are indexed with comments and keywords in digiKam.

By: Clifford Newton

Clifford Newton — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:24:18 +0000

I have subscribed to Digital Photo mag from the offset and find it invaluable and now I have discovered Digital-photography-School things could not be better! What a great site.

By: Pete Mauro

Pete Mauro — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 06:08:00 +0000

I just bought a MacBook Pro (replacing my PC) and I have been checking out Aperture. I looks like it really streamlines this whole process. Anyone use it?

pete

By: Graydon

Graydon — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 03:54:45 +0000

I don’t have the need to do a lot of adjustments to my photos as far as visual corrections / manipulations. Since most of what I do is either personal or for Mako’s Kitchen, I find using ACDSee Pro works great for…
– import
– rough cull obvious screwed up shots
– resize to new folder
– detail sort (normally take 2-3 shots per “image” with minor differences)
– rename
– create thumbnails
– append name for thumbnails
end

I’ll do my upload via FTP and call it a wrap.

By: Dilip Barman

Dilip Barman — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 03:58:17 +0000

The best way really is to play with the software. I think that it is easier and cheaper to first learn Paint Shop Pro. But whatever package, install it, open up a copy of an image, and experiment – just don’t save that copy over the original. A great book is Scott Kelby’s “The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers” (2005) – but it is really an intermediate book. You can also try any number of other books, such as “Secrets of the Digital Darkroom: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Getting the Best Results from Your Digital Photographs”, Peter Cope & Simon Joinson (2003); and “Photoshop for Photography: The Art of Pixel Processing”, Tom Ang (2003).

By: Unser

Unser — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:38:53 +0000

You could search for “Photoshop Tutorial” on the web
Here is the Adobe site:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/tutorials/index.php
Some more:
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/elements/tutorials.html#elements_4_videos