This is also where the bit depth debate can go a bit deeper (I wasn’t trying for a pun there, honestly). As Eric S. mentioned in the comments last week, he gets the best possible quality by working in 16-bit color. He actually sees the difference in the final images and, really, that‘s what it comes down to with any of these suggestions. Try things for yourself and compare results.

For our studio work we find that 8-bit is generally an acceptable compromise between quality and file size. On some images, especially with gradients, we do use 16-bit depth. That does double the file size and we don’t always deem it necessary. With our next generation of computers and software upgrades, though, and with the price of storage coming down, I would expect we’ll be migrating more to a 16-bit workflow. It just makes sense. (Anybody want a deal on six Mac G5 computers?).

The following information may be basic for many Photoshop users but, in the context of detailing a workflow, it’s good to go over it here, I think. It never hurts to bring things back to the basics.

So now our files have been converted to psd files (either 8- or 16-bit, whatever your preference, but still in the Adobe RGB workspace) through a batch action and saved in the “working“ folder on the desktop. During this batch action we also create a duplicate layer of the image that rests immediately above the background layer. This new layer receives all of the retouching. The original image always remains as the background layer, completely untouched, just in case we ever have to revert to the very beginning, original file. It’s our fail-safe, fallback backup. Dave Cross has a great video tutorial on this over at Layers Magazine.

Huge, physical file corrections, like perspective control, may be made right now (at the beginning) or saved until the very end of the process. Let’s save that till the very end, just before outputting our “final” file.

The next step is to check the file at 100% for any dust spotting needs. Obvious flaws in products and people are also retouched at this point.

All color, curve and hue and saturation adjustments are made using non-destructive adjustment layers. If it is possible to make a correction using an adjustment layer then we avoid altering the actual pixels of the image, preserving quality and making later adjustments much easier. If you’re not currently using adjustment layers then it will immediately improve your quality and workflow by doing so.

For commercial print reproduction with an average subject, we generally set our white point to 245(ish) and black point to 8(ish). Here it kind of gets into a “feel thing”, depending on our experience with the client, printer and subject. For a complete tutorial on color-correction here’s a great article at the go-to resource (again), Layers Magazine.

Okay, so we’ve made our adjustments and the file is looking much better. Retouching has been done and the color and contrast have been corrected. Starting from the bottom up, we first see the original, unretouched image as the background layer. Immediately above that is the retouched version of the original image with physical flaws removed. Then follow our series of adjustment layers for color, curves, hue and saturation. This is our completed working file. No sharpening or resizing will be done to this “working” file, that happens when it is output as a “final” for the intended, specified use.

We always save this layered “working” file at this stage, preserved in it’s many layers. From this point we can go back in and trace what we’ve changed and easily make any minor corrections to color or contrast at any point. For our studio, we may be outputting this file for multiple uses: printing in a brochure, web use and tradeshow, for example. These uses will require that different sizing, sharpening and color spaces be applied to the file. That is why we stop at this point for the “working” image, preserving it at this stage, and eventually applying specific tweaks depending on the application of each “final” file.

Next week, let’s make the final files…and get this job delivered and billed!

Now that our RAW files have been selected for processing in Phase One’s Capture One software, we will output these “selecteds” as high-resolution TIFF files. At this stage of the game we we want to create the best possible uncompressed TIFF files that we can. Here are the basic settings that our studio uses:

1. We output the file at the original capture size without resizing up or down at this point. While I’m a big fan of Capture One, I’m not crazy about the interpolation of files (resizing) within this particular software. Other processing engines seem to do a better job at this. If you use different softwares for resizing, I strongly suggest you test each of them head-to-head to see how they do. I’ve used a few commercial programs for upsizing and, for what we do, Photoshop seems to do the best job for anything up to 200%.
2. 300 dpi – most of our work ends up in commercial print (ink on paper) and this is the standard. If most of your work is for inkjet printing you may choose 240 dpi or have another preference. We make sure all of our cameras and softwares are set to output at 300 dpi by default.
3. Adobe RGB color space – Adobe RGB is the industry standard recognized by UPDIG and it translates well to CMYK later for commercial printing or sRGB for web or C-prints. Adobe RGB contains much more color information than sRGB or CMYK, so we want to have all of that information available while the file is in the working stages. It’s smart to start out as Adobe RGB and, if you’re going to convert to a smaller color space (sRGB or CMYK) at some point, do that “color information downsizing” just before finalizing the file for delivery. There are other color spaces trying to get people’s attention but, for now, it seems that Adobe RGB is the standard for “working” purposes.
4. We output in 8 bit color…most of the time. After talking quite a bit about wanting as much file information as possible, here we’re opting for a choice with less color information (8 bit vs. 16 bit). For most of our purposes 8 bit is fine and having the additional color information of 16 bit photos creates huge files that slow down computers and require much more storage space. While the industry (and we) are moving more toward working in 16 bit color, our studio isn’t fully there yet, to be honest. When we have subtle gradations in a photo, though, the 8 bit file might not provide enough subtle information and banding (blotchiness) can occur where tones smoothly “roll” into one another. If we shoot on white with a gentle gray gradient, for example, we process the image to 16 bit right off the bat so there is more color information and gradations are smoother. It’s all about finding a balance between quality, file size, processing time and storage. 8 bit is fine for most everything we do and it keeps our workflow manageable.

Now here’s a kicker: in next week’s installment we’re going to convert these carefully rendered TIFF files to Photoshop documents (psd) to use them as “working” files. Observant readers will note that they can convert directly from RAW to psd in ACR / Bridge / Photoshop and Lightroom, bypassing this entire stage of TIFF output I’ve just described.

So why do we do this step and not just put the RAW files into an Adobe product? If it’s just one or two files we’re talking about, we might do that. But because we shoot our jobs directly into Capture One and it uses the custom color (icc) profiles we’ve made for our cameras, it keeps us within our color-managed workflow from capture to output (camera, monitor and printer all profiled). When we use the Adobe products we aren’t able to use our custom camera profiles, we have to use the installed, default Adobe camera profiles. For critical color applications we benefit from using Capture One.

If you’re using Canon DPP or Nikon Capture NX to work on files, you may also (like us) be adjusting them within that software and processing to TIFF before transferring the files to Photoshop. Personally, I’m really comfortable with having the TIFF file since it’s what I’m used to and it provides another universally recognized format of file as backup.

Now these processed, selected TIFF files can go into the Selected folder on the desktop. This is the point where we add metadata and keywords, to the TIFF files. We have templates set up with our copyright and contact information and this is applied to the files in a batch. Bob likes to do this in Adobe Bridge, I do this after pulling everything into yet another program, my favorite for cataloging: iView Media Digital Asset Management Software (recently bought out and being changed over to Microsoft Expressions). The great thing about iView Media Pro / Expression is that it automatically reads down into subfolders and can read from multiple folders in the same catalog. It will recognize most any media file you can imagine. No matter what you want to catalog (photos or movies), this software will recognize it and deal with it just fine. It’s very powerful. It also allows for the creation of contact sheets and quality web galleries.

We’ll get to this at the end of the series, but iView Media / Expressions is the software we depend on to catalog our many tens of thousands of images shot through the years. It also creates catalog files that can be easily distributed to our clients.

That’s a lot to chew on. Next week we take these Selected files and make them into Working files.

Digital Workflow, Stage 2: image selection

Last week we looked at archiving RAW files from a shoot. There’s an important point I failed to mention that should be throw in. When I initially back up my RAW files only the blank frames or total disasters get discarded. At this initial stage I don’t like to “chimp” much to make space on a card, or toss out files too liberally. For some photographers that works just fine but not in our particular studio environment.

As a commercial studio we resist throwing away images from the early staging of a shot or images not exposed correctly. What we’ve found is that even though the entire photo may not be desirable, it may contain an element we need later. For example, a poorly exposed image may contain opened eyes or a smile on a person that can be cloned into another image. These things don’t happen often but when the client says, “hmmm, do you have one where…”, then the odds are increased if we keep the marginal ones. So, in the beginning, we rarely throw anything away before the initial archive onto CD / DVD. Who knows, even a casual snapshot may have historical value that isn’t evident at the time.

Now it’s time to move on to selecting the files we like. My personal workflow was developed a few years ago and, as such, I’m pretty entrenched with a certain software set. There are newer “all in one” solutions available (like Lightroom and Aperture) that may ultimately prove to be a better alternative to the multiple software solution. I’ve downloaded a free trial of Lightroom and am learning my way around the software as this is being written (Free Trial Downloads from Adobe). If you’re currently using Lightroom or Aperture I would really like to hear your impressions of the software packages.

The majority of our jobs are shot tethered to a computer using Phase One’s Capture One software. Shooting tethered is also possible with a number of other softwares: Nikon Capture, Canon DPP, BreezeBrowser (are there others?).

I will say that I’m very happy with the processed images coming from Capture One. The latest LE version has just been released, Capture One 4, and it allows for quality file management and conversion. We use the more expensive professional version, Capture One Pro V3.7 PC/Mac Software, that allows tethered shooting. This software accepts the custom icc profiles we create for each of our camera models and that is a bonus in the studio atmosphere. We’re not limited to preset profiles provided by the software. Using a color-managed workflow gives us greater control over color from start to finish.

The majority of photographers shoot to a card and then offload images to a hard drive. Since we’re shooting directly into Capture One, we make our selections within this software as we go by tagging images for processing. You may be doing this selection process in some other software (Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, etc.).

Capture One is simple, there are “tag” and “untag” functions. Personally, I’ve never gotten into different ratings using stars, etc., at this point in the selection process, this is just for initial keepers. These selected files will be processed out as TIFF files from Capture One and saved in the “Selected” folder created on our desktop. This way we have a high-resolution TIFF file of our initial favorites to work from (and, as a result, another generation of backup for preservation).

There are a number of criteria we use in selecting images as “keepers” and the software facilitates this. We can quickly check the following elements in the Capture One browser. Many other softwares allow this kind of scrutiny, also:

• View image histogram (which is also done during the shoot) to insure we’re choosing the best exposure from a series.
• Use the visual exposure warnings built into the software. Our software is set to flash warnings if a file’s highlights register over 245 (they turn red) and shadows drop below 8 (they turn green). Those parameters may be changed within the software.
• View image at 100%. We don’t like to view the image at less than 100% in order to judge sharpness. Though camera LCD screens have improved greatly I still don’t care to make critical judgements on the camera back, I feel it’s better to wait and do this on the computer screen.

Now that we’ve selected our RAW files we use the software to make them as color, exposure and white balance perfect as possible before processing out to TIFF. We’re now creating an original image and don’t want to just knock something out and “fix it in Photoshop”. The reasons for not overly manipulating a non-RAW file were discussed in an earlier post, RAW vs. JPEG.

That’s it for this week’s workflow, we’ll be back at it next Tuesday with our standards for processing TIFF files: color space, 8- or 16-bit, choosing ppi, and more.

Shooting great photographs means little if you don’t handle your files properly. I’d like to share the outline of my digital workflow, one refined over the past few years at the photo studio. Workflow is a process that takes time and experience to implement and understand. We’ll be taking it a step at a time. This week: properly caring for your RAW digital captures (we are all shooting RAW, aren’t we?).

If you are serious about managing your digital files properly, I should tell you right now that the definitive resource is Peter Krogh’s DAM (Digital Asset Management) book. It gives a thorough examination of the subject be prepared to learn. Get your hands on it if you can (but not our copy, please, because people don’t seem to bring it back once it’s been loaned).

Before diving in too deeply I should mention there are many ways to tackle this topic and new methods and software tools are introduced on a regular basis. My personal photo workflow differs a bit from the studio workflow, which differs from how my business partner, Bob, handles his images. For these reasons I will mention various softwares while trying to speak in more general terms about our process. The goal at this point is to help everyone, whether they have the latest software or must use a freeware download to organize their images.

It is worth noting that newer softwares like Lightroom (and Bridge within Photoshop CS3) can accomplish a number of the tasks that once required multiple softwares. For a personal or small operation they may provide all that you need. You can get Free Trial Downloads from Adobe for both Lightroom and CS3. I own Lightroom but really need instruction from someplace like Kelby Training to get a thorough understanding. It’s on the list…

We move our date with a firewire card reader.

At Daylight Photo, there are four stages in the life of every digital file prepared for a client:

1. RAW
2. Selected
3. Working
4. Final

So if you’d like to try things the “Daylight Photo way”, create a folder on your desktop right now, while you’re thinking of it. This folder is dedicated to just one job (or set of images), whether we’ve filled a bunch of flash cards or only shot a few photos. Inside this folder create the following four sub-folders: RAW, Selected, Working and Final. I have this folder hierarchy created and sitting empty on my desktop at all times. Then, when I’ve shot some new images, I duplicate this empty set of folders for the fresh photos to go into. I then name the main folder with our specific, assigned job number. Many people use the day’s date as their job / tracking number: 2008_05_13.

I should have mentioned that, before shooting, make sure your camera is set to number files in a continuous sequence, rather than starting over at 0001 every time you start a new series. This alleviates having a bunch of files all named the same thing later down the road.

After you’ve shot your job or series of personal images and filled a flash card or two:

Download the RAW files into the RAW folder on your desktop using the fastest card reader you have available. Downloading from the camera is slow and you don’t want to risk file corruption if the download is interrupted (camera gets turned off or battery dies).

A quality CD/DVD, a full-sized jewel case andan archival DVD marker are the tools of the trade.

Now, before doing anything else, I temporarily copy the RAW files to an external hard drive. We have a dedicated portable drive with multiple connections for this specific purpose (officially called the LaCie 160GB Rugged Triple Interface Portable FireWire 800/400 USB 2.0 Hard Drive). The RAW files will stay on this drive until a job is completed, maybe a few weeks (or until the drive fills up). This is the fail-safe backup to the backup.

Before even breaking for lunch or reaching for another iced tea, burn a CD or DVD of the RAW files from the desktop. No file renaming, no metadata, no nothin’ else has been done at this point. This disk is our primary backup for the longevity of the RAW files, so we really take care of it. Bob thinks I’m crazy for not renaming the files beforehand but I don’t want to alter any data at all. Call me crazy (it’s okay, he does already).

On the CD or DVD, as close to the center hole as we can get, we write the job number (for you that might be: 2008_05_13) with an archival marker and also “RAW” (see photo). The way I understand it, gases emitted from a regular marker can accelerate the deterioration of storage media. We take no chances and use a specific DVD marker.

Gently place the disk in a DVD case and store it standing up (like books on a bookshelf) to help retain the disk shape. A major goal here is to refrain from touching the recording surface or bending the disk. Using the roomier DVD cases (instead of the slimmer CD cases) gives the disk more room “to breathe”. Bending or twising also greatly contributes to disk damage and can harm the recording surface. If you bend disks like a potato chip when pulling them out of a case, try to be a little gentler next time.

The backup DVD library.

A note on CD / DVDs: I’m not an expert but it’s generally recognized that the re-writable (-RW) variety are not as stable as the one-time (-R) writable disks (more on DVD formats here). We prefer Taiyo Yuden brand CDs and DVDs. Again, from what I hear, this brand is the best quality available outside of the very expensive gold disks. I’m being honest in saying we don’t spring for the very expensive gold ones. Most media (regardless of who “labels” them) come out of just a few factories in China and Taiwan. The Taiyo Yuden are made in Japan and regarded as being of higher quality.

A downside to the Taiyo Yuden disks: they’re generally sold in quantities of 600. For our studio it’s not a big deal but for the hobbyist, well, that’s a lot of media to buy at one time, especially when discount disks are available for pennies at the local office supply store. From MacMall they run $195 for the 600 Taiyo Yuden White Inkjet Hub Printable 8X DVD-R and $169 for the 600 Taiyo Yuden silver lacquer 52x CD-R 6×100 pc spindl.

Whew, that’s it and that’s a lot. Next week it’s on to the next stage of the process: Selecting files for processing.

]]> http://www.prophotolife.com/digital-workflow-preserve-those-captures/feed/ 16 http://www.prophotolife.com/tech-getting-more-from-raw/ http://www.prophotolife.com/tech-getting-more-from-raw/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 04:01:31 +0000 Jim Talkington http://prophotolife.com/?p=92

In earlier discussions we’ve looked at video of how to read a histogram and read why RAW files hold more information than JPEG. I’d suggest checking those entries out, if you haven’t already.

To date I’ve stressed proper camera exposure so file manipulation will be reduced in post-production (especially important when shooting JPEG). Speaking in general terms, the less an already processed file (JPG, TIFF, etc.) is manipulated, the more integrity there will be to the information contained within. We’ve seen that RAW files have greater flexibility for manipulation, allowing us to do much more with an image with fewer penalties (and sometimes gains) on output.

Now that we know how to obtain proper exposure, today I’m going to suggest adding a little extra exposure to your RAW files for greater detail. Yep, let’s push those RAW files toward overexposure…but without actually overexposing the image. This is also called giving the histogram a “push to the right”. We may even unlock some extra detail and more subtle tonalities.

Why would we want to do this? Because there is a lower signal to noise (s/n) ratio in the dark (shadow) areas of an image. In other words, shadows are noisier (we really saw that in the examples in RAW vs. JPEG, when we severely underexposed). But if we can add additional exposure to our image then we will lift the dark areas and shadows, record more detail and get less noise. The trick when adding exposure, though, is to not overexpose the highlights, blowing them out. We want to push the histogram to the right without pushing it off of the right. Then, when processing the RAW file, we will adjust the tones so they are where they look the best visually. By lowering the slightly overexposed shadows back down to where they belong we should (theoretically) see less noise and better detail in, especially, the darker areas of the photograph.

So let’s put it to the test. Here are two photographs taken with a Canon 20D (ISO 100, daylight WB). The image on the left was shot on aperture-priority auto exposure and on the other I pushed the histogram further to the right, using exposure compensation to +2/3 stop. You can click on the overall scenes to see them full-sized for comparison.

*Note: your camera’s histogram display doesn’t accurately represent the image’s 12- or 14-bit RAW capture, it represents the 8-bit detail in the image thumbnail. So there may be detail in the RAW capture that is not accurately represented by the camera histogram. In other words, the camera histogram is a conservative measure.

Canon 20D on auto exposure, resulting in a pretty accurate, middle of the road, real world exposure. This is maybe a touch dark but pretty close to how the subject looked.	On this shot I overexposed 2/3 stop, pushing the histogram to the right a bit. This image is lighter than the actual subject appeared.

The normal RAW exposure corrected in CS2. It looks good.	The overexposed RAW exposure corrected in CS2. It looks similar to the shot at left, just a hair different.
Here’s where we see a difference, in the details. This is the bottom of the door, a dark area. These are 200% enlargements so we’re really blowing things up. More noise is apparent here in the corrected “normal” exposure.	The originally overexposed image is much smoother in the gradations. At this 200% enlargement the difference that 2/3 stop makes is obvious.

This was a pretty simple visual explanation. For further details and the mathematics behind this process there’s a great entry on Luminous Landscape I highly recommend. As always, I hope this has been a practical help.

My camera is set to shoot RAW about 95% of the time. The reasons are many, too many to point out in one article so let’s hit the big ones, as far as I’m concerned. Using a pretty standard DSLR like a Canon 20D/30D/40D:

1. Think of your camera as having two components, a picture capture device and a picture processing device. When you shoot a RAW file the camera takes the capture and then stops there, it doesn’t process the image out. It’s up to you to process the image out later in software. You may then process that image out to an original JPEG, TIFF, psd, whatever you like, choosing your settings at that point. Let’s say you mistakenly had your camera set to daylight (outdoor) lighting when you were shooting under tungsten (indoor) lighting. No problem, since the file wasn’t processed out in the camera you can simply choose tungsten white balance in your software because you are just now doing the second part of the process. You then output an original image with the correct settings.

When you shoot directly to JPEG the camera both captures and processes out an original image to a set of specifications you’ve set in the camera (color balance, color saturation, contrast levels, etc.). You may have set the camera to normal levels or “punchy” color levels. If something was set wrong, like the color balance, you can’t simply reprocess the pixels in development, as you can with RAW. Yes, you can correct JPEG images in Photoshop. But there are problems with this…

Okay, it’s extreme time. I simultaneously shot a RAW (Canon CR2) file (left) and a large JPEG (right) of the same scene with a Canon 20D. These were shot with correct exposure but under tungsten light with the camera set to daylight color balance.
Here’s the RAW file, straight from the camera: ugly.	The JPEG file looks much the same straight out of the camera.
See the QPCard () in the middle of the scene? I put this RAW image into Photoshop CS2 (ACR), clicked the eyedropper on the gray square in the middle of the QPCard and voilá, it looks pretty darn good. Done with one correction to the RAW file.	I opened the JPEG in CS2, opened Curves and clicked the gray square in the QPCard with the eye dropper to neutralize white balance. Ugh. Trying this simple correction has give some whacked out results. Way worse is that the highlights are magenta and the shadows are green, a terrible cross-curve that’s hard to correct.
Detail of the RAW file shows that it’s sharper (we would have expected that) but look at the smooth tonal gradations in the metal. All with one click to an initially poorly white balanced image.	Noisy, off-color and not as sharp, the poorly color-balanced JPEG needs lots of love to make it acceptable. Way more than I’m willing to give.

But what if you are going to process that RAW file out to a JPEG anyway? Then both files end up as 8-bit in color anyway. Won’t they be the same? Here’s where RAW shines. If you make color, contrast and exposure corrections to a 12-bit RAW file in your software, then when you output it to JPEG the pixels are all in the right place, like a perfectly laid stone walkway.

Now let’s look at the camera-original JPEG. It’s like a stone walkway that’s already been laid out with all the pixels in place. Yes, you can rearrange the stones / pixels but compromises will be made by the software. It will have to interpret / interpolate colors and gradations in difficult areas. It is only pulling from an 8-bit palette so the color options are more limited than with RAW. You will see this in action in these underexposed photo examples.

On these shots the white balance is set correctly to tungsten. But now let’s mess up our exposure by underexposing by two stops. This is an extreme example but any underexposure does degrade the image.
RAW at -2 stops.	JPEG at -2 stops. They look much the same
Okay, in CS2 (ACR) I did a really quick correction to the file and processed it out. This has pretty darn good shadow detail for being so poorly exposed in the first place. We can thank all that information in the 12bit RAW file!	In CS2 I did a quick curve correction to the JPEG and got the highlights and midtones looking acceptable. But where’s the shadow detail? There’s not as much info to pull from when starting with an 8bit original.
Here’s the real proof. Way more detail, sharpness and less noise in the shadows.	The JPEG can’t compete with the RAW. With more work it could look a little better but it’s clearly outclassed.

With RAW files you can take the RAW image and make all of your choices about size, color, contrast, etc., and then output it to a new original each time (which might be a JPEG). This is greatly aided by the fact that there’s 12-bit color. The software can make easier choices and less compromises. Nice.

And if you don’t like the image, just go back to the RAW file and reprocess it out how you want it. Look at that, it can be a very different but totally original image with uncompromised information. You can create endless originals from the RAW file, all with solid, full information, regardless of your processing choices. Amazon has great resources for exploring various digital RAW workflows.

3. I really think we’re in the stone ages of digital photography. That’s another reason I shoot RAW. Since I’m processing the files out in software (and not the camera) I’m also thinking there could be a great advance in RAW processing software someday. Wouldn’t it be great to have this RAW, uncompromised digital information and be able to output it to even higher quality because of an advance in software?

Check out the examples and see if it makes sense. I hope this has been a help. If it has, please let a friend know. If it hasn’t, please let me know!

Thanks,
Jim T.