C2S
5th of April 2008 (Sat), 15:45
Hey all,
I've been thinking about this lately. So when editing RAW-files, you first open them e.g. in Digital Photo Professional, edit the photo to your liking with the various controls it offers, and after that you probably want to transfer it to Photoshop and edit some more in there. But the contrast changes in DPP may cause some clipped highlights and blocked shadows. So depending on the contrast curve setting, you lose small part of the dynamic range in the transfer that you can't recover in PS since the data isn't there anymore. Now, I'd like to know what do you do to minimize this loss?
Do you minimize the contrast curve to -4 and use the neutral picture style, and just improve the contrast to your liking later in Photoshop?
Does anyone use the "linear"-mode for gamma, for the transfer, and fix the brightness later in PS? I think this mode seems to retain the highlight data pretty well, but I'm not entirely sure if the some of darkest shadows become blocked if this option is just ticked and brightness then left as is.
Or do you transfer multiple photos with good contrast but different EV-settings, and selectively blend them in PS? Or perhaps even running these through a HDR-software like Photomatix for the contrast edits, before opening them in Photoshop?
Final question. Do newer versions of Adobe Photoshop offer direct importing of the RAW-files, such as .CR2-files, with full data? At the moment, I'm stuck with a very old version of Photoshop Elements, so I can't tell. But an option like that should be the perfect solution to this minor problem, unless I've missed something.
I've been thinking about this lately. So when editing RAW-files, you first open them e.g. in Digital Photo Professional, edit the photo to your liking with the various controls it offers, and after that you probably want to transfer it to Photoshop and edit some more in there. But the contrast changes in DPP may cause some clipped highlights and blocked shadows. So depending on the contrast curve setting, you lose small part of the dynamic range in the transfer that you can't recover in PS since the data isn't there anymore. Now, I'd like to know what do you do to minimize this loss?
Do you minimize the contrast curve to -4 and use the neutral picture style, and just improve the contrast to your liking later in Photoshop?
Does anyone use the "linear"-mode for gamma, for the transfer, and fix the brightness later in PS? I think this mode seems to retain the highlight data pretty well, but I'm not entirely sure if the some of darkest shadows become blocked if this option is just ticked and brightness then left as is.
Or do you transfer multiple photos with good contrast but different EV-settings, and selectively blend them in PS? Or perhaps even running these through a HDR-software like Photomatix for the contrast edits, before opening them in Photoshop?
Final question. Do newer versions of Adobe Photoshop offer direct importing of the RAW-files, such as .CR2-files, with full data? At the moment, I'm stuck with a very old version of Photoshop Elements, so I can't tell. But an option like that should be the perfect solution to this minor problem, unless I've missed something.