Can I shoot photos Medium Rare instead of RAW?

January 31, 2012 2:04 AM

I want to develop a RAW image processing workflow. I'm currently stuck evaluating RawTherapee vs Lightbox and basically just twiddling the values. I'm sure there must be a better way ... right?

I recently sprung for a new camera (Sony a65) and I intend to shoot Raw + Jpeg when it arrives. Never having really played with RAW before I don't really have a good workflow.

I'd be after tips for both logistical workflow "import files here, tag and delete etc" and also creative workflow - some tips on using the values. An example of the latter I found here (http://www.digital-photography-school.com/simple-lightroom-image-fixing-workflow) but found difficult to apply to RawTherapee.

The type of photos I take range between landscape holiday style shots and macro images (usually at f1.4 or f1.8 or so).

Thanks!

Prior to this I used to shoot in JPEG, copy into Picasa, "I'm feeling lucky" and if I liked it, saved.

posted by Admira to sports, hobbies, & recreation (6 answers total)

I guess it all depends on if you want to keep the original raws after (for endless changes), or adopt a near-enough is good enough approach. Lightroom 3 is very cheap to buy online here atm, but there are also other options between that and RawTherapee, such as CyberLink's Photodirector that you can get a free three month trial of at the moment.

I think, when you're first getting your feet with PP, it's easy to be a bit overwhelmed, and either do very little to your images (what you're doing now), or go crazy and process the hell out of them just cause you can and it looks terrible.

I'm by no means a PP guru myself, but for where you're at now, I would honestly suggest sticking with Picasa for a bit longer; there is much functionality there you are yet to explore and it can handle your RAW files with ease.

Banish the "I'm feeling lucky button"; do the adjustments yourself. Picasa will be a nice bridging tool between nothing and getting into the more heavy duty curves and what-not with Lightroom. Also the way it handles RAW workflow is reasonably similar.

So, what kind of workflow should you try in Picasa? In my opinion (by no means the last word!), it doesn't matter too much, but personally I feel like White Balance ("colour temperature in Picasa, definitely flawed compared to its commercial equivalents but still usable) & exposure compensation ("fill light" in picasa) should be amongst the first things I do, and sharpening should be basically the last, with cropping, contrast ("shadows" and "highlights" in picasa), saturation (you will want to probably bump this up a little if you're using RAW files), blemish fixes etc all coming in between.

Are you familiar with the histogram (graph thing accompanying pictures) and what means? Familiarise yourself with that and what it means first; it can be a powerful tool.

Experiment, find out what you prefer and how you like to do things; you can take as many pictures as you want and there is no "right" way when it comes to PP or workflow (and judging by the popularity of terrible tone-mapping and HDR, my own tastes may not be representative!), everybody is different.

To finish, select the photos you want to save from the "Library view", and click the save button, Picasa will tell you it's keeping the original raws, which - if you have the space - is a good way to fly.

Sorry this doesn't address your question directly about workflow, or using LR or RawTherapee, but hopefully it will provide some use to you.
posted by smoke at 2:39 AM on January 31

In your search for the solution that works best for you, I'd argue that the ability to apply your chosen adjustments to one file, and then easily copy/paste or synchronize those setting to other images shot in the same environment or situation is the key to an expeditious and efficient workflow.

Most raw conversion and optimization programs will let you do that, but each works differently.

For example, on a recent shoot I came back with about 1000 raw files. About 200 were studio-lit head shots on a white background. Another few hundred were environmental portraits, each with supplemental lighting. There were also around 150 environmental portraits shot with available light in one area of the client's workplace. The rest were candid photos taken at various locations of employees at work.

Step one was to quickly browse through all of the images and delete anything that I know I won't want to keep (closed eyes, lack of sharpness, poor composition, etc.).

In Adobe Bridge/Camera Raw (my personal app of choice), I spent a few minutes optimizing a single frame from each of these shooting scenarios, and then instantly applied those settings to all of the others in that group.

So, I really had to manually do adjustments on about four pictures, and after synchronizing each group's setting to its optimally adjusted image, all of the keepers were looking good.

Obviously, I had to tweak some other individual images on occasion, but my workflow made editing and optimizing all 1000 images pretty simple, and pretty quick.

I always archive all of the raw files and all of the edited/optimized files as well. That way, if a year down the road I get a call from the client who wants, for example, all of the head shots in black and white, I can go back and create a set of specifically optimized grayscale images. For me, this is virtually never a simple matter of clicking the "black and white" checkbox as it involves curves or other tweaks for great looking black and white images. However, once again, I just apply the chosen adjustments on one image, and sync the others to it.
posted by imjustsaying at 3:49 AM on January 31

I would suggest a hard look at Lightroom. It would be worth spending the money on. I don't usually shoot raw but when I do Lightroom is not just a huge time saver it really gives you amazing control of the end product.

My standard workflow for when I shoot raw is:
-Ingest images
-Browse and tag the winners using PhotoMechanic (an editing tool of sorts geared towards photojournalists)
-Open up Lightroom and import the winners
-Make adjustments as needed
-Export

Before I had Lightroom my color correction for a big event would sometimes take days. With Lightroom its now a few hours.

I tried RawTherapee once in a pinch and regretted it. Not that intuitive and the end result when I exported was really disappointing. Maybe if I wasn't in a rush I would have eventually learned the ins and outs of it but I'll stick with what works for now.
posted by WickedPissah at 7:23 AM on January 31

I shoot everything in raw and use Lightroom. I used to do the raw+jpeg thing but quickly realized it was just extra storage and you can spit out jpegs anytime you want. Storage is cheap however so it really is not a big issue. Modern cameras optimize their jpeg conversion so there is some incentive for keeping those as well, especially when your editing is likely to consist mostly of cropping. Anyway, I import everything into Lightroom. Images can be tagged or rated so that you can work with the winners without having to discard anything. Lightroom doesn't seem to choke even when the database of photos gets absurdly large, thus making keeping everything easy. I store everything by date but tagging allows you to assemble projects etc. regardless of how you store. I cannot say enough good things about this software. My workflow system is relatively simplistic so I have tagged this as a favorite hoping someone with a more elegant workflow will drop in and comment.
posted by caddis at 8:25 AM on January 31

Cambridge in Colour (an excellent tutorial site) has this detailed workflow which contains lots of links to articles explaining the concepts used.

RawTherapee is good for fine-tuning individual images, but as a tool for importing, filtering and batch editing large numbers of images it is very cumbersome. In my experience you really need to pay attention to the exposure and colour balance of each individual picture when using programs like Picasa or RawTherapee if you want to avoid getting bland results. It does have the capacity to save a settings file and process numerous images in exactly the same way, but if you're taking landscape shots -- which are probably going to be fairly diverse -- then mechanically applying the same settings to numerous pictures is probably going to produce some disappointing outcomes.

You might find that the software which came with your camera does a good job of automatically adjusting exposure, colour balance and lens defects -- in which case, your task is simply to do some basic tweaking to contrast, sharpness, etc.

Personally, I never use RawTherapee anymore because Photivo has more options for fine-tuning, including an excellent 'Eyecandy' tab which is useful for doing non-realistic, creative processing (i.e. that popular 'vintage look').

If you're doing macro, then you might want to learn about focus stacking, which can be done with software such as CombineZP, since that raises a whole different set of workflow considerations.

I like to geotag my pictures. Picasa and Google Earth are a good combination for this. It is better to geotag your RAW files, rather than the jpgs which you have generated from them, because the geotags are placed in the RAW metadata and should appear in the jpgs anyway (but be warned that some programs strip them out).

ExifTool GUI is useful if you have forgotten to set the clock in your camera.
posted by mattn at 9:07 AM on January 31

If I understand your post correctly, it boils down to two questions:
1. What is an effective workflow,
2. What do the controls do.

I can only speak for Lightroom (and my version of it is slightly different than Lightroom 4...the controls are also a little different). For me, the first obstacle was understanding the funky way that LR deals with files...the lrcat and lrdata stuff. It seems like you get that, so I'll move on.

When I think of workflow I think of the whole process, from ingestion to delivery to the client. For me, LR handles most of the workflow. I use LR to import files to my computer, to select pictures, to RAW process, and the convert files to jpeg. I burn to disk using my operating system.

Now, as for what is an effective workflow in the LR Develop module...well, the Adobe organized the LR Develop module for you to use the right-side panel from top to bottom. In my version, I have the histogram at the very top of the panel. Below that are the cropping, spot-removal, red-eye removal, grad filter, and adjustment brush tools. In theory, you should use these first.

Next are the components of the Basic Tab starting with the White Balance sliders; Temp and Tint. Now here is the issue...you may not find very much help in figuring out how to use these effectively. For the most accurate colors, your first shot would be of a color checker and then you could use the eye-dropper tool to select the right box in the checker, or you'd have LR manage your color checker software to create a color profile for that shoot (remember, LR is pro software).

Alternatively, you slide the WB tools back and forth until you get to what is accurate based on your memory.

Next, is the tone panel. This is where you really start to manipulate the image (as opposed to correct the image). I don't want to go to deeply in this because, like I said, the tools in my LR will no longer be in LR 4. Once I am through with my edits I just tell LR to export to jpeg...boom, done.

Obviously, there is so much missing, so I'd suggest trying out either kelbytraining.com or lynda.com to better understand what the sliders do and to get updated info. Kelbytraining.com seems to be very closely tied to Adobe and Matt Kloskowski (who does a lot of the LR videos for them) is one of their better instructors (Scott Kelby himself, on the other hand....not so much).
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 10:13 AM on January 31