Category: Computing

It was a bit of a surprise considering that version 5 is now out but an update appeared the other day for version 4 users; version 4.4 was updated to version 4.4.1, mainly a bug fix but still nice to know V4 users are still getting some support.

For those of you who shoot jpeg, do not edit in post and send your images off to typical print shops, then you probably just have your camera set to sRGB. sRGB is a very limited colour space and cannot show as many colours as modern printers can print. Its the typical output of a standard cheap monitor. In fact many high end displays can only display sRGB, but it is most cameras default setting, and what most print shops assume your camera is set to and what the file is set to.

If you are interested in producing the best output possible then you need to set your camera to AdobeRGB, this colour space can show more colours.

When editing even AdobeRGB cannot handle as many colours as your camera may capture or in fact what a high end pigment printer can print. If you are after the best results then you want your working space to be ProPhotoRGB.

Recently I upgraded by computer by installing an SSD, best upgrade ever and now my four year old MacBookPro is as fast as when I originally bought it even running the latest software.

I decided to do a fresh install of my applications. Unfortunately this caught me out recently, when I discovered some of my recent edits have not been quite as good as they could have. Unfortunately some of the defaults for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are less then optimal.

Now Lightroom is very good; you cannot actual set a working colour space, it uses its own created by the main developer but it can be considered to be similar to ProPhoto, the difficulty is if you export it to a third party program, if the third party program will accept it you need to set the Colour Space to ProPhoto RGB, by default Lightroom will export it as sRGB in 8 bit. This can be limiting and can cause issues with banding and artefacts appearing in finished image.

In Photoshop you get to the colour settings by pressing Shift-CMD-K. I would suggest you start by choosing either Europe General Purpose 3 (for Europe) and America General Purpose 2 for the USA.

As you can see the default is sRGB which needs changing to ProPhoto RGB, Gray wants setting to Gamma 1.8, yes there is a Grey Colour Space which consists of shades of Grey! Once these are set to your likings then I would suggest you save it. If your copy of Photoshop does not show as many options as above then have a look to the right, there is a button marked more options. Press this and more options will appear.

So is this extra effort worth it, well it only needs configuring the once so its not really any extra effort but i’ll let you be the judge, here is the final edited picture of Lisa.

In case you are wondering this image as been converted back to sRGB to be put on the web. Many web browsers cannot cope with anything else then sRGB and do not support colour management. It is getting better as Safari and Firefox now both support colour management.

RAW verses JPeg.  Which to use.

Its an old Argument on the forums but JPeg seems to becoming more popular again, but why?  Well in Camera processing is a lot better then it used to be, and the connivence and ease that it gives certainly speeds up the workflow.

Once the photographs are imported into my DAM Package (Digital Asset Management) they then have meta data and keywords added to them.  Even with import scripts and presets it is still quite a bit of work.  Its worth it though as anyone who has been approached by a buyer who wants to purchase the high quality original to the small jpeg you have placed on Flicker or your Blog will testify.  Being able to quickly and easily find your work, a week, a month or even five years later can mean money in the bank, and not being able to find it a lost sale.  Keywording and adding Meta Data to your photographs is essential to any semi or full time professional photographer.

But back to the original question; what about editing and post production?

The above two pictures show a edited RAW file followed by the out of camera jpeg.

Some of the in camera jpegs do look a lot better then the raw files imported into your favourite raw processor.  It is a complaint that a number of photographers make.  The image they see on the back of their camera is nothing like the RAW image they see after importing into Adobe Camera RAW/Lightroom.  What a lot of people don’t realise is that modern RAW software is designed to give a basic flat image.  It is then up to the Photographer to take that image in the direction they wish to go.

My out of camera jpeg is certainly not as good as it could be, there are lots of in-camera settings to improve things, but what people don’t realise is that the histogram is based on the in-camera JPeg.  So if you tweak the JPeg you are altering the display of the histogram.  Currently only the Leica Monochrom can display a real histogram based on the RAW file.  White Balance also has a major impact on the histogram.  I try to have my JPeg settings configured to give me an accurate as possible histogram.  In the above shot my White Balance is out due to the complex mixed light source, if I had got this right in camera then the JPeg would have been better.

So the top image has had a lot of tweaks and adjustments made, while the second image is just an out of camera JPeg.  Is the added work necessary and worthwhile?

Well this example may be a little extreme, the lighting was mixed light sources, the contrast high and the exposure difficult.  I got the shot wrong in camera but as I shot RAW and JPeg, I had the RAW to fall back on.  RAW files can be edited far more then a small 8 bit JPeg.

For an outdoor street scene the in-camera jpeg and processed RAW would likely look the same, in fact the JPeg would highly likely be better.  In that situation one would likely say that the extra work involved in shooting RAW is not worth it, and I would likely agree.

But what about in this example.  The out of camera jpeg is reasonable, but by editing the RAW file, applying a simple preset and then a minor adjustment with a bit of additional burning and dodging, the image pops that little bit more.  But is the extra work worth it?  I suppose it depends on the image and the end result.

Get it right in camera and if your intending not to do any intensive post production then the JPeg will be fine.  If your not sure you are going to get it right in camera or are going to do a lot of post production then shoot RAW.

So what do I do?  Well I tend to shoot RAW and JPeg, but I have the JPeg set to Black & White.  That way in Lightroom I see images side by side, one colour (the RAW file) and one Black & White (the JPeg), I can then see at a glance which I prefer, colour or Black & White.

For personal work JPeg is a good option but while many currently professionals are saying that they use Compact Mirror-less Systems and shoot in JPeg it should be remembered that for their commercial work they are often shooting RAW on Medium Format, then at the end of session are shooting some personal stuff on mirror-less in JPeg and posting straight to their blog.  One is given the impression that Pro’s are now all shooting that way.

 

I have blogged previously about some of my testing of Adobe Lightroom V5.

Well this morning while checking out Leica and Apple Rumour sites looking for information about the new Leica Camera that is due out this week and for new about WWDC for Apple news, they both had articles announcing the release of Adobe Lightroom V5.

You can also get more information from Chris Bennet’s Blog here.

A few days a go, I published an article where I shot a RAW photography in the evening then before getting back to my computer I had saved it to my iPad, processed the RAW file into a jpeg, then edited using layers in Photoshop Touch, then published the result.

All done on the iPad with quite good results I think.  Yesterday I looked again at the original RAW file and decided to process it and edit it again on my laptop using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

If you want to see the original post its here.

First of all here is the original RAW file processed into a jpeg.

 

In this image very little has been done, except a little fine tuning of the highlights and shadows so that all the image can be seen and a little import sharpening.

 

Now above is the image that was produced on the iPad.  Similar to the original file but more to how I envisaged it, when I took the photograph.  I kind of saw it in black and white but the red door took ones attention.  That night on the iPad I loaded the file that I had processed in PhotoRAW and took the jpg into Photoshop Touch.  I selected the red section copied it to its own layer, I then turned the underlying layer to Black & White, darkened the result and then wrote the blog post and published.  All from an iPad.  I think that is quite an achievement and am very proud of the resultant image.

People have said since the release of the iPad that it is a consumption device, but I think the above image proves that devices such as the iPad and the Android (Insert your favourite Windows RT/Palm WebOS Tablet OS here!) tablets can be used in the field.  With their light weight, instant on and good battery life, they make an excellent device for basic editing in the field.

Of course you are all saying that you could make a better job using a laptop, but the iPad fits easily in my camera bag and I do not really notice the weight and do not have to bother with the charger.  The truth is I can make a better job with my laptop but do I want to always carry it with me and then share the results of my work with the world.  Well yes I want to share but the weight and convenience of the iPad will win out.

 

Here is the version produced on my laptop using the full power of modern software.  Better, well yes but the other image is close, and more importantly, I could experiment in the Pub (Scottish Bar) a few minutes after capturing the image and produce a nice peice of art.  A few days later when I had the time would I have remembered to edit this again on the laptop to produce this without already have producing a draft on the iPad.  I don’t know but its food for thought.

PS.  Dear Apple if your thinking of producing a sub £1000 11″ MacBook Air with a 1400 x 900 display, with battery life close to an iPad, and a 250 GB or more Solid State Hard Disk then please let me so I can replace my iPad.