crop then sharpen/noise remove?

[relux]

Hey all..

What is the proper order to do image editing. I have huge sized photos i've taken that I will crop parts to 600x460. Question is, do I do color correction, noise removal, sharpen before or after I crop it down to the final size?

I would think you would want to do any kind of noise removal and sharpening before any cropping or image resizing because you have more pixels to work with, right?

Thanks for any responses!

[vjack]

I'd say it depends on what kind of cropping you are talking about. I certainly wouldn't do any image resizing until late in the workflow. However, if I want to crop part of the image out that I don't care about, I might do that early. If you know you aren't doing to want part of the image, it doesn't make sense to base your color correction on that part.

[Scottes]

Cropping early means that the histogram will be accurate, thus your contrast will also be accurate for the entire picture. It is recommended *if* you know that the resulting crop will be the *only* version you make from that image. Personally I never know if I might make 8x10s and 11x14s from a image - or both - so I leave cropping to almost-last. I never sharpen an image until I know the final output, so that is always last.

[EOS_JD]

Sharpen last always

[Robert_Lay]

It is also a bad practice to save frequently in JPG. It is better to work from the beginning in 16 bit per channel mode (for example in PSD or TIFF) and not switch to 8 bits per channel until all manipulations, cropping and sizing have been completed, and at that point do the save to JPG.

[dave_bass5]

I agree that its sometimes better to crop early on.
I find Neat Image likes a full size fill to calibrate the noise level but after that i tend to crop to size, that way im working on a smaller file size so that helps speed things up and also as pointed out the histogram will not be showing anything not relevent to your shot
I always sharpen last using Focalblade

[bad81637]

It is also a bad practice to save frequently in JPG. It is better to work from the beginning in 16 bit per channel mode (for example in PSD or TIFF) and not switch to 8 bits per channel until all manipulations, cropping and sizing have been completed, and at that point do the save to JPG.

Based on info in some recent posts, I've been trying to work more in 16 bit mode. To clarify Robert's post... should I sharpen (typically my last step) in 16 bit mode or after I've converted back to 8 bit. Robert mentions "all manipulations" so I assume sharpening at 16 bit, but he doesn't mention it specifially.

Thanks!

[Scottes]

Sharpen at 16-bit.

[jfrancho]

I sometimes use the crop tool in ACR to preview the histogram, especially if I cropping out areas with highlight or shadow areas. In combination with the alt-click Exposure/Shadows clipping preview, it helps verify the final exposure. I then clear the crop and convert the image, and do all the PP tasks. I actually do the crop near the end of the workflow.

[Robert_Lay]

I sometimes use the crop tool in ACR to preview the histogram, especially if I cropping out areas with highlight or shadow areas. In combination with the alt-click Exposure/Shadows clipping preview, it helps verify the final exposure. I then clear the crop and convert the image, and do all the PP tasks. I actually do the crop near the end of the workflow.
ACR 3.3 only - it wasn't there in ACR 2.4, right?

[jfrancho]

I'm using 3.3 - I can't remember what was in 2.4.