pbelarge wrote in post #15494213
I shoot 98% of my images in Raw and have been for years. I have been using LR4 for my global edits and other edits. Lately I have been using onOne and NIK plugins as well.
I have decided to try PS, as the classes I have been taking show other means of post that are processes I want to be able to work with. In my basic beginnings of PS, there are lots of instruction, sometimes without too much background as to why.
I understand Camera Raw fairly well and I really like it.
The reason for my question, is the use of layers with adjustments seem to work extremely well. I am in the process of developing my work flow and am looking to the people here with tons of experience to help me along.
I have performed an awful lot of research in regards to workflow. I have come across a number of PS experts who say they are using PS less and less, LR more and more. Of course there are some who mention it is the only way to go. I am in the process of seeing whether or not it will work for me.
BTW - thanks for the responses. I do expect a lot more questions...
Hello again Pierre - kudos to your efforts at improving in the craft. It's been a journey for myself and I'm always on the lookout for hints and tips that will improve my own situation. I believe I know where you're coming from 
. Hopefully some of my suggestions will provide positive guidance.
I've never used LR so cannot provide any useful advice in that direction. I'm pretty simple in my approach, only using CS5, ACR and Bridge. I also tend to be fairly realistic in my shooting/printing style, having come from a traditional wet darkroom b/w background. Much of my fine art work is urban landscape and some rural.
Like many other photographers here, I probably use only a small percent of PS's horsepower, using many of the same tools and techniques over and over.
When I process an image I think of the following: image composition, brightness, shadows, contrast, saturation, level of detail, things like that. Composition usually is not a processing step - I will have done that during the CAPTURE in most instances. Some tweaking in PS may be necessary though.
Like others I shoot RAW, preferring to make my global changes in ACR to the maximum amount of information. This also makes it very easy to set WB over ranges of images shot under the same illumination. It works well with wedding and social event work as well as certain landscape situations. I will use the graph sliders on one of the RAW submenus to tone down extreme highlights, or re-illuminate some shadow or dark areas. Some fill light may be thrown in, as well as a bit of highlight recovery.
Once I've prepared my RAW image, I will open and save it as a TIF. Now the real fun begins. I tend to "see" my files as bright zones and dark areas and I usually make my exposures in such a way that my highlights don't get too blown out. IMO I feel it's easier to reclaim shadow detail - even with the danger of introducing noise - than it is to bring back highlight detail that was obliterated. When pixels are gone.......well they are gone.
I use EXPOSURE ADJUSTMENT LAYERS a lot in CS5 to fix what I couldn't achieve in the initial capture.
BRIGHT AREAS: This is typically sky, but can also include light pavement, sand dunes, things of that nature. I will first create my Exposure Adjustment Layer. On the top menu -
Layer –> duplicate layer This will be my work layer. I usually start out with the LEVELS menu and may even select AUTO to see how PS interprets the scene. If it subjectively pleases me I will keep it. Now I will apply a Layer Mask
Layer – layer mask – hide all - hit B for brush key – percentage of brush I will be erasing away portions of this using the brush too. After "hiding all" I hit the "B" key which is the shortcut for the paintbrush. If I want to erase away 100% of an area - exposing the changes I have made underneath - I hit the "0" key. If I want to just erase 50% of it I hit 5; you see the correlation. As part of my particular workflow I flatten the image when I am done. I don't go back .
I will then repeat Layer –> duplicate layer and examine my highlight areas. Using the Levels menu or perhaps exposure, or contrast/brightness, I will make adjustments to the brighter portion of the image. I will go through and do the exact same thing with the darker or shadowed areas until I am satisfied that I've revealed sufficient detail. Throughout all this I may adjust saturation levels, but not WB. Any WB tweaks would have already been addressed in my Global RAW adjustments.
Sharpenning - Only when I'm satisfied with all other factors will I sharpen the image as my last step. And I rarely sharpen the ENTIRE image.
If you are doing landscapes and many other types of work, think about how the human eye/brain regards such a scene. Foreground objects are often sharper, more distinct and vibrant, while background detail fades into distance. Too many people make the mistake of sharpenning everything in a scene. This may be fine for close-in work or flatter objects, but it is not optimal for pleasing landscape work.
Again, I will make another adjustment layer (duplicate layer) but now instead of applying exposure changes I will add sharpenning. I due this with the UnSharp Filter. And for most landscapes I will "erase away" the foreground part of the scene rendering it sharp, while ignoring the background. By not applying an sharpenning to the background it creates that "fading off into the distance" technique.
What I have described in the last paragraph is also know as ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE. The technique helps give depth and dimensionality to our picture. The challenge of the landscape photographer is to take a 3-dimensional real world scene and place it on a two dimension piece of paper or screen in such a way that it still appears 3D.
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