Post Processing

Define “post process”? I shoot in RAW so I have to process/convert my frames. Are you talking about manipulating content rather than simply processing the image so that it looks good to print?

Thanks for your reply. I meant the latter—post process so it looks good in print.And if it’s not shot in RAW do you post process anyway? I don’t know much about this and it seems like a good start to research here in LS and then move on to whatever i can find on the net. Thanks again.

Do you mean toning your images?... An absolute necessity in my opinion. Even a “perfect” exposure can use a little tweak here and there.

i understand about toning your pictures and i have done that for editorial work. but let’s say you get to document a corporate event and you shoot a total of 500 images—do you tweak all these for submission to client? it seems such a lot to do.how is it done over there at your end? thank you. kat

Kat I shoot everything in RAW. My standard procedure for that kind of thing you are talking about is to open Bridge and establish basic color balance and curve/saturation on one of each series photos. Then I copy those Camera Raw settings to all other images that need the same adjustments. Then I open all files in Bridge Raw and then have Bridge save them as JPG for the client. That is the fastest way I’ve found for cranking out hundreds of images that don’t need to be individually adjusted.

For all my other work I do process each image via adjustment layers in Photoshop that are based on a few actions that I’ve set up to automate the creation of the layers. That speeds everything up so that I can process just about any image in less than 45 seconds.

The real question should be, when do you stop processing your images. I find myself continually tweaking some images every time I see them. I always think they could look a little better.

I usually do a base RAW conversion in Lightroom, making sure that there is detail in the highlight and shadow areas of a shot, save as a Photoshop document, fine tune everything in PS using adjustment layers.

Thank you Jonathan, all—i think Adobe Bridge is slow on my PC so that makes me think of upgrading.I am still also using CS2.Is Bridge Raw on CS3? I appreciate the info.Brian-I have Lightroom.But have been using PS more often. Will explore Lightroom. There’s a thread on what books are best for photoshop.I will look into that too unless you have other suggestions as well-sites to check,etc. Thank you very much.kat