I really need guidance with CS6

I just can't find results worth printing.

Please view this photo:

Post an unedited export of the raw file for comparison.

Looks like the fact that it was underexposed has left you with a lot of noise and the resulting lack of detail.

Yep, pulling shadows, especially with an older DSLR, will introduce noise. That's why the adage has been "expose to the right" (ETTR). Take your photo and chimp: if your histogram is showing values more to the left (and there's space to the right)....set your exposure more to overexpose. Try to fill your histogram towards the right.

It looks very grainy like you cropped the hell out of it. Can you post up an unedited full size image?

Not every shot is worth printing. Maybe 0.1% the photos I've taken are worth printing, and I've probably printed 0.0001% of my photos. In this case it's too heavily cropped, there's noise from being boosted, and you've sharpened to increase the noise.

Take another photo. You have time.

The histogram provided by this site shows that although you have already boosted the exposure, you still don't have any whites in the image. The histogram is still well to the left of where I would want it to be. Your resize details are a little confusing, as the image is 1510 pixels wide. Still it seems as if you have the image at close to 100% when displayed here.

Firstly you need to do more work in ACR, the app that opens the RAW file and allows you to adjust it. It is very important to remember that when working in ACR or any other RAW converter there is no such thing as "unedited" when it comes to exporting the image. All you have in a RAW is a default conversion, which in ACR is a long way from a useable image. Adobe expect you to make many adjustments from those initial defaults. Honestly if you want useable results from your CR2 files without doing much/any work you would be far better off downloading and using Canon's DPP4 software. Because DPP is Canon's own proprietary software it is able to read all of the camera settings, and to correctly reproduce an image identical to the in camera JPEG. Because you are working with RAW though it is possible to change all of those settings, and more, post exposure. I would always recommend DPP for those looking for ready to use images from CR2 files with minimal work.

Some things that will help when working in ACR is playing with the sliders, it's easy to reset them, and nothing you do is going to permanently change the original CR2 file. Generally when working with an underexposed image you will need to adjust both the white and black points, probably the shadows, and maybe even the highlights sliders as well as the exposure slider. These sliders allow you to adjust the tonal areas of the image that their names imply. The whites slider is important as it allows you to get the very brightest points in the image to be a true white.

More bad news I'm afraid, by my reckoning any image from a 50D where your first instinct is not to pull down the highlights slider by a lot from it's original Adobe default position, is essentially underexposed. For what is IMO a correctly exposed CR2 file from a 50D I would be starting with highlights at -100 and exposure at -0.5 stops.

White balance is the only camera generated data that is actually recorded in a format that other RAW converters can understand. Even though the software can read the values from the camera it may interpret the values to get a different numerical value for the WB than you would see in say DPP. Also if you set then numbers to be the same in two different converters the result may well be slightly different colours. When you underexpose though you hamper the camera as it struggles to be able to differentiate colours in the generally low resulting pixel values. So adjusting the WB in an underexposed image may well not have nearly as significant result as weith a correctly exposed image.

You also need to consider that you want to add at least some Clarity to most images, and probably a little Vibrance, which is clever saturation adjustment. It boosts less saturated colours more than those that already are saturated. It tries to stop the most saturated colours from hitting the saturation .Further the default sharpening and NR are not ideal when working with underexposed images. I find that using a much higher amount setting, with very high levels of masking works much better, the masking applies the sharpening to strong edges only. Although there is colour NR applied by default, in an underexposed image you may well need to turn that up. Generally you can up the Colour NR until you lose the colour noise without any real detriment to the look of the image. The default for luminance NR is none, so that really does need adjusting. You need to be viewing the image at 100%/1:1 view in order to see the application of both sharpening and NR, you don't get to see the changes you make at any other zoom level.

One "control" that should be front and centre in ACR is on the calibration tab, and that is the colour profile. Colour profiles perform a very similar job in ACR as do Picture styles in Canon cameras and DPP. They allow you to change how the colours from the camera are rendered in the final image. In the version of ACR that comes with CS6 you get a set of Adobe profiles with names like Landscape and Portrait, as well as Standard, Faithful, and Neutral. There are also some "Camera" profiles, which are Adobe's attempts to match the Canon Picture styles. I say attempts to match, since because ACR uses completely different computational algorithms to convert the RAW data to pixels you can never have an exact match.

ACR also lets you resize an image as well as cropping it. It does this in the output settings, so it is only something that happens as the image leaves ACR. Also you don't actually have to open the image in Ps once you have done working in ACR, it also allows you to save the image out in a number of image formats, including PSD, TIFF and JPEG. I prefer the results of resizing directly from ACR, as it is done as part of the whole process that is initially building the RGB pixel image.

The great thing about ACR is that once you find how you like to process images you can get a good line on what your personal defaults should be. ACR makes it very easy to change the defaults from those Adobe ship with it, in fact Adobe expect that the defaults will be changed, It's why their initial defaults always seem to need so much work. Well at least in the older versions. Adobe have made some significant improvements to both defaults, and the auto tuning algorithms in the latest CC release. The new auto system is called Sensei, and actually works remarkably well as a simple quick conversion method.

Alan

Edit to say I wholeheartedly agree with Tim, in this case the image is simply just not worth the effort needed, since it will never be a great image. I have been printing all my photo prints at 16×12 for a number of years, between those in frames on the wall and those in my physically rather large album (16×12s won't fit in A3 poly pockets, even though A3 has a larger area of paper) I probably have something like 75 odd prints. I'm just planning what will be in my late summer print job, I normally do one for my birthday and one at christmas with maybe ten prints in each. This is out of a digital image catalogue that exceeds 65K images. Apart from dropping off colour neg film for developing, and using the 6×4s like proofs, I probably only printed 10% of my images even in my film days when I had my own black and white and colour darkroom at home.

Post processing works best to enhance great photos, not save poor ones. Pulling up under exposure/cropping in on distant subjects, reducing the resulting noise, fighting with colour casts and trying to regain sharpness etc will seldom turn a problem shot into a great one.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18691478
Post processing works best to enhance great photos, not save poor ones. Pulling up under exposure/cropping in on distant subjects, reducing the resulting noise, fighting with colour casts and trying to regain sharpness etc will seldom turn a problem shot into a great one.

And sometimes the content of an image is irreplaceable, and you have to do the best you can. For example last christmas my daughter wanted to make a print of the last photo taken of her boyfriend with his late grandfather. The problem was that the only copy of the image was the quite small and heavily compressed one that was on Facebook. So not only did I have to pretty much double the linear resolution, I then had to go through the image and attempt to remove as many of the JPEG compression artifacts as possible. It probably took me the better part of 16 hours work to get that image to the point where I thought it made an acceptably nice 9" square canvas print. I think everybody else that saw it, well the non photographers at least, saw it as amazing, with talk of wanting to print it much larger. The recipient of the gift loved it, and to me that was worth the effort.

This is also why I always take images at the maximum possible quality, even when the planned use doesn't require it. You never know if something will change, requiring a different use for the image.

Alan

I genuinely appreciate the feedback on this topic folks, especially from Alan.

The posted image wasn't one I wished to print and frame and hang on the wall,
but an example of what I've been encountering.

It's now obvious to me that I should explore more of what ACR can do,
and what PS does after ACR.

I shoot RAW only, for the record.
I learned long ago that it provides far more options for processing.
Also for the record, the posted image was neither noise-reduced
nor sharpened; I merely resized a few pixels to fit here full-sized
after a crop within ACR.

I understand the idea of running exposures higher in the histogram,
so I'll be trying that method next time I'm shooting, potentially giving
me more wiggle-room in processing.
I've been a little disappointed, however, that the 50D seems to somehow
lack IQ that my previous 40D possessed, although that's likely due to
much different subjects and conditions of shooting, as well as a more
concentrated effort to use vintage lenses.

I've a lot to learn, to be sure.