What Post Processing do you do on all images?

[kyeoman]

I am new to this post-processing deal. What are the steps you go through to get a image ready to be printed or posted to a gallery? Do you do the same thing to every picture you take and decide to keep, or do you do different things to each and every picture? Any comments and enlightenment would be appreciated.

Kevin

[Daylon]

I'm very new at post-processing but GENERALLY I..

1) Check exposure via photoshop CS (on the big monitor - 21'') (bump up 1/3 - 1.0 if I have to)
2) check color saturation.. (again, bump up by 5-20 on the 'saturation' slider if I have to)
3) resize to 750-800 pixels wide (proportions constrained), save as Jpeg medium (8-9 on quality).
4) add a border (via filter plug in - again CS2)

Post in TFP.. hope for the best?

There's other people that do quite a bit of post-processing stuff.. but that's all I generally do to my pics. If it's not 98% of what I want out of the camera, I delete it.

Hope that helps a bit..

I haven't messed with Noise Ninja or Adobe Lightroom that much, so can't really speak to what they can do for me that I don't already do in CS2..

[kyeoman]

Thanks, I was curious as to what most people do to their images.

[Daylon]

Well, i wouldn't say that I represent "most" people.. Maybe a good portion on the "clueless to photo newbie" spectrum..

I'm sure some of the pros spend 10x the amount of time in Post-Processing than they spent actually composing and taking the picture (i.e. dodging, burning, sharpening, enhancing, etc..)

[Duffy Pratt]

First, in ACR:

1) Check white balance and adjust if there are known neutrals.
2) Adjust exposure control, if necessary.
3) Adjust brightness, if necessary.

Then, in PS:

1) Check for good luminosity blend.
2) Curves to add contrast, set endpoints, and adjust color balance.
3) Shadow/Highlights if necessary
4) Sharpen

Duffy

[Daniel Bates]

It all depends what I'm shooting. Wedding and portrait images get the full blown details treatment, which can take up to half an hour per image (I'm slow). Sports shots for the paper get a cursory cropping, levels adjustment, and sharpening. Sports shots for my portfolio get a little more careful processing but still nothing major.

[thelegend1472]

I don't post process any of my work. It's all straight from the camera

[photobykim]

sure it is bryan... and i'm the tooth fairy!!

[DigiSLR]

First shot is usually a grey card. After importing photos, adjust white balance to to match grey card, check exposure (adjust if needed), check and adjust curves, sharpen, save as TIFF, crop, convert to sRGB, save a JPG for web viewing.

[MRCPix]

if I am shooting in a studio and want to fine tune I always set a custom white balance so I don' have to spend time doing it on the computer. Then I check curves and color saturations then sharpen. After that I will resize and save as sRGB for web if that is where the image is going.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by thelegend1472

I don't post process any of my work. It's all straight from the camera

You're going to get hairy palms if you keep that up B.

[ttusa]

adjust USM, brightness/contrast to original image's likeness (or try) and some cropping-enough where I still feel comfortable...

[engstrom]

I pretty much do what Duffy said but I also occasionaly add local contrast enhancement to my workflow - USM at 10/20/0.

[thelegend1472]

Originally Posted by srwatters

You're going to get hairy palms if you keep that up B.

Haha. No editing at all I swear. This is a raw file saved in sRGB and resized that's it:

[fdi]

I will convert from RAW to TIFF with Breezbrowser. If I really blew the exposure when I shot the image I will do a little exposure compensation along with the RAW conversion. Once in PS, I will do levels, curves, saturation (possibly back to curves), some basic sharpening. If I print, I print with Qimage. That is where I will crop and allow Qimage to do the final sharpening. I might also play with the saturation a little in Qimage for the final print depending on the image and media.

Cheers, mark