Professional Photography : Photoshop

Camera RAW 101: Why Shoot RAW?

Eileen Fritsch — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:49:00 GMT

Although blogs and websites are great ways to pick up snippets of useful information and insights, reading (and writing) photography books can help put a lot of complex information into perspective. My newest book was published by Amphotos Books in August.

Entitled Camera Raw 101: Better Photos with Photoshop, Elements and Lightroom, it was written for any digital photographer who is interested in going beyond the preset options in the camera and is ready to take control over the creative process. The book provides the information you need to make RAW work for you, including setting up a preliminary workflow, using and automating Adobe Camera RAW, and basic and advanced conversion options. The book also includes a detailed comparison of Adobe Camera RAW features in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom 2.1. In the following excerpt from the book’s introduction, I explain why you should shoot RAW and suggest when RAW isn’t the best choice.

Why You Should Shoot Raw: When total control and the highest possible image quality are needed, RAW is the perfect format to use. The greater dynamic range, color depth, and post-capture editing capabilities make the RAW format the best choice in most situations.

RAW files shouldn’t be seen as the lazy person’s way to great images, though. A poorly composed image, an out-of-focus image, or one with gross exposure errors isn’t going to be magically transformed into a quality photograph because you were able to edit the RAW file. It is the responsibility of the photographer to capture the best possible image at the time of capture.

Advantages over JPEG and TIFF: RAW files free the photographer from having to be satisfied with what the camera thinks are the correct values for sharpening, noise reduction, and white balance. The differences can be startling! Since this information is all stored in addition to the file, it becomes possible to make changes to them after the fact. This is where the RAW format becomes so valuable.

When shooting in JPEG the camera processes the color values based on the current white balance setting in the camera to create a final image. The file is then compressed to save space using the current quality setting in the camera. RAW capture, on the other hand, does no color interpretation in-camera but depends on the RAW converter software to handle this task. Hence, you have much more freedom after the capture to either fine-tune the image or make corrections to basic problems, such as improperly set white balance.

RAW is the only capture method that preserves the full color fidelity of the image. With JPEG, you automatically throw away one third of the color information in your image. The sensor in most cameras records data as a 12- or 14-bit file, giving each pixel one of 4,096 levels or more of color. To take advantage of this, you’ll need to shoot in RAW mode. JPEG only supports 8 bits per pixel, reducing the possible colors to 256 per pixel. Less color information means that yu have less latitude when editing the image for final output.

JPEG is a lossy compression method. Every time a file is saved in the JPEG format it loses a little more fidelity.

JPEG and TIFF also apply sharpening and noise reduction at the time of capture. If you’ve set these incorrectly, and don’t catch the error, you have little choice in the edit phase. I strongly feel that the camera does not know what my intended use for an image is and should never be allowed to choose the sharpening or noise reductions it “thinks” I want.

Saving in camera in TIFF is becoming much less common in recent cameras. Although some, such as the Canon DSLRs, actually tag their RAW files as TIFF, these are not true TIFF files. TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format, is a standard file type for bitmap, or raster, data. Unlike JPEGs, TIFFs are not subject to lossy compression or to only 8 bits of color information. The file sizes are large; a 16-bit TIFF file will be about three times the size of the same RAW file, because TIFF is saved to 16 bits rather than the 12 or 14 bits recorded by the camera. The extra bit depth is an advantage over JPEG, but the same control issues that JPEG suffers from are present in TIFF capture as well. Color balance, sharpening, and noise reduction are all applied directly to the image at the time of capture. The only advantage that TIFF offers over JPEGs is color fidelity and lossless compression. To be honest, I can’t think of a single instance where saving a TIFF file in camera is a good option.

When RAW isn’t the Best Choice: There are times when the extra work involved with RAW processing can’t be justified. As an example, photojournalists will typically shoot in JPEG when shooting for assignments. The image files are smaller, important for quick transfer to the newsroom, and the JPEGs can be used with little or no extra work before publishing. Another time when JPEGs may be a better choice is when you are shooting youth sports events and want to make prints for sale right at the site. This is another case of speed being more important than quality.

I love to share information on digital imaging and photography, and I hope my new book reflects this passion. I’d love to hear from you with comments about Adobe Camera Raw or to share your experiences.

Tips for Better Landscape Photography, Part Two

Eileen Fritsch — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:59:00 GMT

By David Saffir

In my first post on shooting landscape photography last month, I shared a few tips for increasing your odds of going home with tack-sharp images. In this post, I’ll dig deeper into the details of making the most of your landscape photo opportunities. This list is based in many ways on the minor, and sometimes not so minor, hiccups I’ve had in my own work.

1. Before you leave your home or studio, make a checklist of the things you’ll need. I’ve learned the hard way to carry extra batteries, camera cards, and a spare card reader. Take the camera manual with you. An extra battery charger can be a life-saver. Most of us carry only one, and if it is damaged by a faulty wall outlet, or other problem, it can become a “game over” situation. It happened to me while I was in Israel; you won’t believe what it cost to have one sent by FedEx from New York.

2. Test your camera and each lens you plan to take before you set off on your trip. If you use zoom lenses, test the lens at the short and long end of its range. Check the lens for autofocus function, too.

3. Once you’ve chosen a spot from which to shoot (or even better, before that), ask yourself these questions:

Do I need to format or change camera cards?
Is the ISO setting correct? (Generally, landscape photographers should use the lowest available ISO setting – usually 50, 100, or 200 ISO.)
Is the white balance set to the conditions (daylight, cloudy, etc)? (Please don’t use AUTO white balance; this makes batch processing difficult, if not impossible.)
Is the camera set to record in Adobe 98 RGB (if available)?
Can the camera shoot in RAW? (If so, this is your best option.

4. Make sure you’ve chosen a safe place. If you think light will be low, take a flashlight and look around carefully. You’ll sometimes find a surprise (nice skunk!) And, if you are shooting near the ocean, never, ever turn your back on the water. It’s possible to lose a camera, or yourself, to an unexpected wave. On windy days, stay close to your camera and tripod, for obvious reasons. I’ve seen them go down more than once

5. Choose the right lenses. In 35mm format, a 14mm prime will do the job (Canon and Nikon both make very good ones). Some of the lenses in the 21-24mm range are good, but check the reviews before you rent or buy. There’s quite a bit of variation in performance among this group. The perspective control lenses (marked PC) made by both Nikon and Canon are very good, because you can expand the width of your frame to near-panorama proportions. You may also wish to consider a medium telephoto, such as a 200mm or 300mm lens. These give you the opportunity to isolate parts of a landscape, making for some interesting shots such as the image below.

6. Think about how you will see the screen on top of the camera that shows camera adjustment settings. If you are working on a tall tripod, you might have to bring something to stand on to see the panel, or change the camera position to bring it into view. I carry a small plastic dental mirror in my camera bag, and use it to see the top of the camera without moving it. This saves a lot of time, and sometimes prevents a missed shot.

7. Take extra care when using slower shutter speeds. If the wind is blowing, try to wait until for a quiet (or quieter) moment to take your shot. Try to remember not to rest a hand on the tripod or camera when shooting. Keep those fingers where they belong when you are shooting – away from the camera.

8. Set your in-camera exposure meter for center-weighted exposure, or spot exposure. Generally, my Nikon and Hasselblad cameras seem to do best with center weighted exposure. Full-frame metering usually results in an underexposed image in landscape work.

9. Make sure that your meter is accurate, and compare your meter to another one. Generally, incident-light exposure metering is more accurate than reflected-light, in-camera metering. You don’t have to spend a fortune on a handheld meter. For example, the Sekonic 358 handheld meter is a very good, rugged meter. Its cost is moderate, and used ones can be found with a bit of digging. Mine seems indestructible.

10. If you are shooting with HDR developing in mind, remember that the camera must stay exactly in place while you are capturing multiple frames. If the frames don’t match up (register) it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to make the image work back in the studio. If you bump your tripod, just start that sequence over again.

11. Check the weather and the sunset/sunrise and moonset/moonrise times every day if possible. This is particularly important in mountainous areas, where the weather is very changeable. Here in California, I’ve been snowed in during June! Keep a sheet of flexible plastic in your bag, or even a small trash bag, to use as an improvised cover in bad weather.

12. Take a small notebook. Jot down the place, time of day, conditions, camera settings, the serial numbers of your first and last frames, and your personal thoughts. You’ll find these to be a real treasure when you come back to an image at a later date. Consider a GPS gadget for tagging your image files.

I took this surrealistic-looking image of the Colorado State Capitol Building from the rooftop of the Colorado History Museum. The Capitol was reflected in multiple windows on the side of a building across the street. The image was captured around 4 pm, using a tripod-mounted Hasselblad H-series camera, digital back, 100mm lens, ISO 50, f/5 @ 1/90 sec. There was a mix of clouds and sun that day, so I had to wait until the Capitol was well-lit to bring up the contrast in the shot. I did some Photoshop editing for contrast and perspective correction.

Computational Photography in the Mainstream

Eileen Fritsch — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:40:00 GMT

By Wayne Cosshall

Computational photography is what you get when you combine the capabilities of a camera, computer, appropriate software, and a modified photographic workflow and the result is much greater than the sum of the parts. I first wrote about computational photography on this blog back in November 2007. It has been one of my most read posts. A year later seems a good time to revisit this important topic.

For those new to it, computational photography is what you get by combining very smart software on your computer with your camera images and a modified workflow that understands the needs of the software. The two most widely used areas of computational photography are panoramas and high dynamic range imaging, or HDRi. But it is not limited to that.

Because there is readily available software to do it, computational photography actually encompasses the following areas:
·         Panorama stitching and exposure balancing by blending multiple shots to cover the desired field of view;
·         High dynamic range imaging by blending multiple images taken at different exposure settings;
·         Increasing depth of field by blending shots taken at different focal points;
·         Re-computing depth of field, creating a shallower depth of field and simulating out-of-focus lens effects in a single image; and
·         Image noise reduction and control.

Other capabilities that I talked about in my previous post on computational photography, such as post-shot point of view choice, are still in the pipeline.

Panorama stitching has become so mainstream that many compact cameras either do it in camera or have modes to make it an easier process. Cameras that have exposure bracketing make shooting for HDRi easier, though many cameras still provide an inadequate bracket range.

Photoshop is part of most photographers’ lives these days and what it does causes people to pay attention. Photoshop has supported HDRi for some years, though not as fully as other software. Still, it has probably contributed to the rise in interest in HDRi. Now, Photoshop CS4 has added the capability to stack images shot at different focal points to increase the depth of field. My testing of this capability shows that Photoshop does a great job on tasks such as combining two or three shots to gain greater depth of field in situations such as interiors, but falls down in extreme situations such as macro where many images are being combined. Just as with HDRi, Photoshop CS4 does a great job with increasing depth-of-field, but you can probably push it further with other software.

You have always been able to decrease the apparent depth of field in Photoshop by using blur, layers and layer masks. But, again, third-party software takes this capability further.

The capabilities that Adobe chooses to include in Photoshop eventually seem to work their way into the brains of photographers. So with the inclusion of depth-of-field-increasing technology in CS4, I am expecting an increase in the awareness and adoption of this extremely useful approach.

Photoshop truly is a direction setter for photographers. As you would expect of software that is so all encompassing, it does so many things well but you can do better at the extremes with specialized programs. This is also true in computational photography. Photoshop will meet the needs of most photographers, but those who want to push further will extend their capabilities with other software.

I am so convinced that computational photography will become ever more important to an increasing number of photographers that I have added a whole new section on computational photography to one of my sites. I plan to spend December and January testing and writing up reviews and tutorials on a huge range of software in this area.

What we need now is for the camera manufacturers to add a new range of capabilities to their cameras. For example, focus bracketing would be a great help. Perhaps you would be able to set the near and far “must-be-in-focus” points and how many steps in between. Or, the camera could use the aperture and focal length information to calculate how many shots are needed to achieve optimal overlap of sharp zones. Then, on a motor drive setting, the camera could take a burst of shots, refocusing as it goes. Aperture bracketing can already be done by putting the camera in shutter speed priority mode and using exposure bracketing. For those of us who use these options frequently it would be handy if the camera could save these settings and add them to a ready Function menu or such, so we can quickly switch everything necessary to do HDRi, aperture bracketing or focus bracketing in one hit. These capabilities should not just be on the top end models. What I see in discussions among photographers is that while professionals do use these techniques, serious amateurs are probably more into them. So these features should be on the pro models but also on at least the serious amateur models.

We are in a blossoming time for photography as we find new ways to do old things and completely new capabilities we never had before. It is a great time to be a photographer.

Understand Your Imaging Software Needs

Eileen Fritsch — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:22:00 GMT

By Wayne Cosshall

The general assumption is that photographers need to use Photoshop as their primary image-editing and workflow software. But this may not be the best option. Just as we use the right lens for the right job, so it is with software.

While Photoshop is the most high-profile piece of software, it wasn’t designed primarily for photographers. In fact, many of its features have little to do with photography and more to do with prepress, graphic design, and web design.

So what are the alternatives for photographers? In the designed-for-photographers category are Adobe’s Lightroom (which has just announced Version 2) and Apple’s Aperture. Lightroom is for Mac and Windows; Aperture is for Mac only. Both programs enable you to organize your images not only so you can find recent work, but also so you can more efficiently manage specific tasks or projects. Both offer great overall image adjustments that are enough for most images.

The programs go beyond Photoshop in other ways too. Both can serve as a platform from which to print images. Although I haven’t yet had a chance to try Version 2 of Lightroom, I have been exploring the facilities in Aperture for using Apple’s printing service to print photography books.

A recent trip into Photoshop Elements caused a surprise. Since the last version I had a good look at, Photoshop Elements has evolved to include most of the Photoshop features that a photographer would ever need, including layers. This means it should be quite possible for a serious hobbyist or professional photographer to use Photoshop Elements as their main imaging software and avoid the extra cost and memory needs of Photoshop itself. Photoshop Elements is also quite responsive, making fast work in the field easier.

Beyond the AA (Adobe and Apple) products, are other products for handling RAW workflows, such as Capture One from Phase One (a new Pro version is expected before the end of the year), Bibble (which is expected to go to version 5 soon) and others. Each has various strengths and will appeal to some photographers, allowing all or most of the imaging work to be done without Photoshop. Of course, many photographers are also perfectly happy with Paint Shop Pro or other software.

There are now so many options, that your challenge is to figure out which software is worth spending the time on to give it a proper trial. Just like cameras, some software will feel better in some hands than others. And even though all software companies offer 30-day trials, it can be a hassle to take them up on the offer. Each product is sufficiently involved and uses quite different approaches that there is a fairly impressive learning curve. So you probably won’t have time to try all of the products yourself. That is where published reviews can come in handy. Better yet, now you can watch the increasing number of videos of the software being used so you see which seem to resonate with the way you like to work. All software requires changes in the way you work but you want to minimize how large the change will be.

Nothing is a given anymore in photography and Photoshop may not be necessary for you, or even the best solution to your needs. See if there is something that works better for you.

Previewing Black-and-White Conversions

BlogArchive — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:19:00 GMT

By David Saffir

Deep down, I’m in love with the look and feel of black-and-white prints. When I was 11 years old or so, I dove into photography in a big way. And because it was less expensive, black-and-white was my medium of choice.

The wonder of watching prints magically appear in the darkroom has never left me. I still experience many of the same feelings when watching a print I’ve worked on come off the inkjet printer. Perhaps it’s a bit less mysterious, but it’s always a thrill.

So now the puzzle: What’s the best way to make high-quality black-and-white images using digital technology? I’ve tried using the presets offered in some cameras, but the trade-offs in image quality are even worse than the ones involved in shooting JPEG instead of the RAW format. It just dumps too much image information to be really useful.

That means the best choice is to shoot in color, and convert the image to black and white later.

What’s the best way to do this?

One way is to use image-editing software such as Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom®. Lightroom comes with a number of presets that let you replicate traditional darkroom processes for toning, contrast, and special effects. These presets are remarkably easy, quick, and fun to use. And the previews are a snap! Simply roll your mouse pointer over the preset, and voila! The thumbnail shows you a preview (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

If the range of presets that Adobe provides isn’t sufficient, you can download other presets that have been created by individual photographers.

Or, you can try some of the conversion presets included with the black-and-white adjustment layer in Adobe Photoshop CS3. These presets are very useful, and many correspond to film-based techniques (i.e., they simulate the use of a colored filter to increase contrast, etc.)

One thing that has always troubled me when testing options for black-and-white conversions is the “before and after” issue. What’s the best way to visually compare the converted image to your original?

I’ve tried using duplicate windows, layer comps, and other techniques, but the pace was too slow. Recently I came up with another idea (which may not be new to many of you). The method is illustrated in Fig. 2, and involves six steps in Photoshop CS3.

Make a selection in the image.
Create an adjustment layer from the selection.
Experiment with different conversion settings.

Fig. 2

Working this way lets you see the changes side-by-side with the original, in real time. I have found that I prefer this method over other viewing options in Photoshop. And the new dialog box in CS3 includes six channels, up from three available in the Channel Mixer dialog.

Save the combined settings you’ve developed as a preset by clicking on the tool in the Photoshop dialog box in Fig. 3.
Delete the partial adjustment layer.
Create a new adjustment layer, and load your saved preset.

Fig. 3

Your image is now a custom-tuned black-and-white masterpiece!

Panorama Photography: It's Easier Than Ever

BlogArchive — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:14:00 GMT

By David Saffir

In earlier posts, I’ve commented about the progress we’ve enjoyed with regard to new tools for photography. Here, I’ll back up those statements by briefly describing an relatively easy system that I’ve developed to make highly detailed panorama photographs. (The only caveat: Everything old is new again. About 75 to 85% of the success with this technique comes from getting it right in the camera.)

In the past, most panorama-style photographs were either cropped from a larger frame, such as a piece of 4x5 film, or photographed using a specialized panorama camera, such as the Hasselblad X-Pan.

In recent years, I started experimenting with using a digital camera to shoot multiple frames that could then be merged into a panorama. Until the middle of last year, I wasn’t satisfied with the results. I had issues with variations in brightness in the scene, lens distortion and other problems.

However, with the release of some new hardware and software tools, shooting and merging frames has become impressively consistent and requires very little extra work in post-production.

Here is a brief rundown of the techniques I use. (Look for a more detailed version to be posted on my website within the next few weeks.)

Use a normal focal length lens, or slight telephoto lens that has good flat field characteristics and little or no change in brightness in the corners.

Use a tripod that has a reasonably good camera mount that can be rotated easily. Level the tripod before you mount the camera on it.

Use a slide mount to attach the camera to the ball head. You will use this to move the center of the camera back and away from the center point of the tripod so that the camera rotates around the optical center of the lens. This eliminates parallax. (The mount shown here is made by Really Right Stuff.)

To know how far back to move the camera on the slide, look up the lens optical center, or nodal point, on the manufacturer’s website. (This info is usually found in the technical specifications for the lens.) Move the slide back from the center of the tripod an amount equal to the number provided for the nodal point. (see photograph)

Mount the camera in portrait, not landscape orientation. You’ll get great top-to-bottom coverage and when the frames are combined the result is very impressive.

Use a bubble level to make a final check of the camera and tripod by slowly rotating the camera through the range of the scene you want to photograph.

(Right now I’ll bet many of you are saying “that’s going to take too long!” but with a little practice setup takes about five minutes.)

Use manual focus, and manual exposure. Try to pick an exposure that is close to the middle of the range of exposure measurements that you get from one side of the scene to the other. Set the camera up in Aperture priority, at a moderate f/stop (f/8 or f/11 is a good starting point).

If you are shooting RAW image captures (recommended) set your white balance to manual, or to one of the lighting presets, such as daylight, in the camera. Using “auto” setting will create headaches for you later in image processing.

Shoot from left to right and expose the frames you’ll need to capture the scene. Overlap the frames by 25-35%. Be sure to use RAW capture, and do not use a polarizing filter.

That’s it for capture – the next step is ridiculously simple.

In Photoshop CS3 use the new Photomerge utility (File>Automate>Photomerge) to merge the images. Set it on “Auto”, and click OK.

Photoshop will create a merged version of your group of images. It will look a bit like a bowtie, and it will have as many layers as you have frames. Flatten the image, crop it to the rectangular aspect ratio you want, and make whatever other adjustments you wish.

To summarize: get everything level from the ground up, use manual focus and exposure, shoot RAW, and overlap the frames. Load them into Photoshop’s Photomerge, and voila! The results are amazing!

After I shared this technique with photographer Ted Dayton, he sent me back this note:

“I processed nine RAW files into 12-MP TIFFs and merged them in Photoshop to create the finished image. About 30 minutes and 450 MB later, the results were amazing!! Anybody want to buy a 6 x 17 camera?”

Gritty Photos Made Easy

BlogArchive — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:52:00 GMT

By Jon Canfield

Last month I wrote about creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs. This is a process in which you merge several different exposures together to get an expanded amount of detail. There’s been a lot of interest on the web lately about using HDR to create what many people are calling the “Grunge” look. These are images that are processed beyond the ordinary to have a nearly illustrative look.

While HDR still gives you the most flexibility in creating this type of imagery, you can create a similar effect with a single image. You just need to process it with extreme settings.

Please note that I make no claim as to creating this method, and I’m really not sure who did create it, but it’s a look that I found interesting and decided to explore.

I’m using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for this example, but you could do the same thing in Adobe Camera Raw or, most likely, many of the other RAW converters. I prefer to work with RAW images for this type of editing as there is more information to work with, and the edits are not destructive – I can always go back and process the image in a more normal fashion.

To start with, select the image you want to process. Now, do something you’d never otherwise consider doing:

Move the Recovery slider all the way to the right so it reads 100.

Move the Fill Light slider all the way to the right so it reads 100.

Move the Clarity slider all the way to the right so that it reads 100.

Move the Vibrance slider, you guessed it, all the way to the right.

Right now, the image is looking pretty bad, and you’re probably thinking I’m nuts. But, this is where the magic begins.

Move the saturation slider to the left (I threw you on that one, right?) to bring the saturation way down. It looks best if you leave a little color in the image, so don’t go all the way to -100.

Now, increase the Blacks to build some black back into the image. (You might have to play with the Exposure setting to get something that looks right.)

The final step for me is to use the Vignette control to darken the corners, which really enhances the feel.

While this works great with some images, you’ll need to evaluate what you’re trying to accomplish. The samples shown here were good subjects since they had an old and neglected look to begin with. I certainly wouldn’t try this on a portrait.

Finally, I print the image on a luster or gloss paper. This is one of the few times I’ll use gloss media, but I find that it gives a nice contrast and usually helps to show the fine details in the image

High Dynamic Range Imaging

BlogArchive — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:11:00 GMT

By Jon Canfield

I’ve been seeing more and more interest in high dynamic range images online and in the workshops I teach. Judging by some of the books I’ve checked out, you might think it requires a degree in physics or at least rocket science to create this type of image. Like many things digital though, it doesn’t have to be difficult and it can be a great new way to express yourself.

Cameras, both digital and film, can’t record all of the information we can see with our eyes. While you can automatically adjust what you’re viewing to see details in shadows and highlights at the same time, we often have to make exposure decisions based on what areas of the image contain the most important information, and risk losing highlight or shadow detail as a result.

With high dynamic range (HDR) imaging, you can get around this shortcoming in equipment and go beyond what our eyes see to record something special.

Let’s take a look at how easy this can actually be in practice. To start with, you’ll obviously want a scene with a wide dynamic range. A tripod will make the processing effort much easier, and a camera that lets you control exposure is required.

I shot this series of three images at Joshua Tree National Park at dawn. Using exposure bracketing, I recorded one shot at the suggested exposure to record the midrange detail, another at two stops under to get the most detail possible from the sky, and a final image at two stops over to open up the shadow detail. Photoshop CS2 and CS3 includes a “Merge to HDR” function (found under the File > Automate menu). But I prefer to use Photomatix because it does a better job and gives me more creative options in processing the images.

When you work in HDR, you’re working with a 32-bit file. In other words, you have plenty of information to work with. But Photoshop requires images to be in 8- or 16-bit mode to do any processing work, and many printers can only deal with an 8-bit image.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

In Photomatix, I open the three images (Figures 1, 2, and 3) and tell the program to merge them together. The result is not what you’d expect as the preview looks like a dark mess. But, now the magic starts. When I go into the Tone mapping dialog I’m can control how this extra detail is going to be displayed.

FIGURE 4

You can get as accurate or as creative as you like at this point. For this particular image, I liked the surreal look generated by enhancing the lighting, saturation, and contrast (Figure 4).

For final output, I sent this to my Designjet Z3100 using HP Instant Dry Satin photo paper. With the Gloss Enhancer on this paper I get excellent results with great vibrant color – just like my vision for this image when I processed it.

Integrating New Workflow Tools

Eileen Fritsch — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:14:00 GMT

By Michael Frye

It was one of those moments when you think, “Of course. Why didn’t someone think of this before?” I was at Photo Plus Expo in New York in 2005, watching a demonstration of Apple’s new Aperture™ program. I’d been shooting digitally for two years, and I was seeing a tool designed to solve one of my biggest problems: how to sort, edit, and organize the vast number of digital image files I was producing. Aperture was designed to work with Raw files, and featured tools like “stacks” that could quickly sort similar images into groups for comparison, and a “loupe” for zooming in and checking sharpness. It had basic image processing tools, including a way to retouch dust spots.

Photoshop has long been the image-processing gold standard, but here was an application that might allow me to do everything from editing to printing or building a web page without ever touching Photoshop. I was anxious to try it, but initial reports of slow performance made me hesitate, especially since Apple didn’t offer free trials. Then in February 2006 Adobe announced a public beta release of its competing product, Lightroom™.

I’ve since tested each update of Lightroom, and finally broke down and purchased Aperture (just before they began offering a 30-day free trial!). Here are a few thoughts:

User Interface
To me, Lightroom is much easier to learn. With Aperture I’ve often delved deeply into the manual or online help to learn things that should be obvious. Lightroom doesn’t have a manual (it’s still in beta) but I haven’t needed it.

Features
Both have many good features, but Aperture clearly has more of them, including the stacks, loupe, and retouching tools. The Light Table is also a great idea, allowing you to make and print completely custom pages. Maybe the final version of Lightroom will add similar functions, but we won’t know until that day comes. Of course, these extra features add complexity and account for some, but not all, of Aperture’s steeper learning curve.

Speed
Owing to the difficulty of working directly with Raw images, neither program is zippy, but the latest (beta 4) version of Lightroom renders changes a bit faster than Aperture 1.5 on my Intel-powered Macbook Pro.

Image Processing Tools
Lightroom is more sophisticated here, offering Curves where Aperture only has Levels, camera calibration, and corrections for color fringing and vignetting (if you’re familiar with Adobe Camera Raw, the tools are similar in Lightroom).

Compatibility
Aperture only works with Macs, and only the latest and most powerful ones at that, so Windows users are out of luck, and many Mac users will have to upgrade their hardware.

Neither program is a clear winner. They both have advantages and disadvantages. If you want to avoid using Photoshop and don’t need the most sophisticated processing controls, Aperture is probably the best choice, as it just does more. The lack of any way to way to retouch dust spots in Lightroom (at least so far) limits its use as a standalone program. If you intend to bring most images into Photoshop anyway, and want more sophisticated raw conversion tools, Lightroom might be a better choice. For now, I’m using Lightroom to edit and do Raw conversions, but finish the processing in Photoshop. I use Lightroom’s color fringing correction on about half of my images, so that feature alone makes Lightroom a better choice for me. And I’m not ready to delete Photoshop’s muscle from my workflow.

Lightroom, Aperture, and Photoshop will continue to evolve and add new features. And other tools will emerge as well. Maybe we’ll have another collective moment where we go, “Why didn’t someone think of that before?” As more choices become available, we will all face decisions about whether to adopt these new tools as part of our workflow, or stick with what’s worked in the past. These will never be easy choices.

It helps to get other people’s opinions. But what works for me might not work for you. Free software trials are great, but nothing is really free: you still must spend time learning the program.

The whole process of researching and trying new tools has simply become part of our job description. No one likes spending hours learning new software, and you certainly can’t try everything. But if a new program offers the real possibility of improving your productivity or the quality of your output, you can’t afford not to try it.What do you think about Aperture or Lightroom? And what about learning and adapting new tools into your workflow? I’d really love to hear your thoughts.