Show Us Your RAW Conversions, BEFORE And AFTER

Thank you. I came to this section specifically to see if there was a thread like this so I could learn. I see most of you use lightroom? Do you prefer this to ACR?

obnoxiousmom wrote in post #9235334
Thank you. I came to this section specifically to see if there was a thread like this so I could learn. I see most of you use lightroom? Do you prefer this to ACR?

LR and ACR are basically the same thing. LR has DAM capabilities. The underlying engines are identical.

What is DAM?

obnoxiousmom wrote in post #9235334
Thank you. I came to this section specifically to see if there was a thread like this so I could learn. I see most of you use lightroom? Do you prefer this to ACR?

col4bin wrote in post #9235340
LR and ACR are basically the same thing. LR has DAM capabilities. The underlying engines are identical.

obnoxiousmom wrote in post #9235392
What is DAM?

Well, DAM stands for Digital Asset Management (if you want to learn a lot about this, check out The DAM Book or google DAM). Fundamentally, DAM is about organizing your images in an efficient and secure way.

Photoshop CSx/ACR was developed long ago to include many aspects of graphics arts, not just photography, and has so many tools for so many things that it can be cumbersome for the basic photography tasks. ACR was developed as a Photoshop "add-on" (plug-in) to handle the growing field of digital Raw photography which requires its own way of handling.

Raw processing has grown over the past few years into more than just an add-on but as a center of a digital workflow, and so programs like Lightroom and Apple Aperture were developed as a "Raw Central" for not just processing the Raw files but also to organize, print, display, output for Web and other use, etc. Lightroom has become a favorite for many because it has an integrated interface for all these things that is easy to delve into and get up and running without having to memorize all types of menu options and dialog options -- sure, a few, and you grow in knowledge with experience, but it's pretty quick to get the hang of the basics.

Lightroom and ACR have a key thing in common -- they share the same Raw processing engine. What this meands is you can interact between Lightroom and Photshop in various ways -- either through Adobe Bridge or by directly sending a file to Photoshop. Most of us who use Lightroom also have an image editor "on the side" and of those of us who do, a version of Photoshop is often that choice.

So, as you go through these projects here, you'll see a lot of Lightroom examples, but also samples of work from ACR, DPP and Aperture. It's all good!!!

Had my motorcycle club X-mas party last night, got some "interesting" shots to say the least... But here's one of my favorites...

only things I did was bump up the "blacks" and use the spot remover tool to hide the neon beer signs on the back wall.

By the way, is there any instructional links or books on LR2.... I'm having fun learning, but i'm sure there's more to it than what I can figure out. For example, what in the heck does the Adjustment Brush do I can't figure that thing out.....

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Here's another from last night also.... Same girl as above throwing darts.

She wanted a pic of her tattoo she just got completed as it is tattooed from a picture of herself (minus the wings ofcourse).

I used the White Balance tool (dropper) off the grey t-shirt in the background and added 250 on the temp scale to get better skin tones. Then played with Saturation to make the color in her tattoo "pop".

my feeble attempts....

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I actually like your straight off shots better lol The color looks more real :P

its hard to get Erin's "pasty white" skin tone correct, but as far as the tattoo goes, the "After" is pretty close to the actual tattoo. Her artist mixes some VIVID colors, I'm suprised she doesn't glow in the dark, LOL

I have seen some tattoos like that

Hey Kawboy! Keep it up!

In the first set, her skin looks oversaturated to me, just pulling back either the saturation slider or just the red and/or orange slider would, to me, make things look less so -- just a thought.

The second one looks good for the WB. It looks like maybe she was under flourescent lights, giving the colors a "cool" look, and you did good with the compensation.

The adjustment brushes take any number of effects and apply them to a specific area. If you start a New brush and set it to your desired effect, you can adjust the specific sliders to whatever pleases you. You can begin brusing in an area and then re-adjust the sliders to fine-tune things, click the Eraser to remove the effect, click back on the A brush to continue with that effect, and at any time exit or click New to open a new brush. The nice thing is that you can re-visit your brush by clicking on the little circle that represents it and you can still change settings, brush new areas, etc. Toggle the "mask" for that brush (a colored "fog" over your adjusted areas) to see where you have applied it or either missed or gone too lightly.

You can apply multiple brushes to an image or an area, so you can, say, click the drop down list and choose a Sharpening brush to sharpen needed areas, then you can click New and choose the sharpening brush again but set the slider to Smoothen to soften some areas.

These brushes are very good once you get the hang of them. And, like other Raw tools, you can totally redo or reset them -- to remove a brush application, just click on the little white circle and hit delete. So, the best way to learn is to practice, and spend some time reading Lightroom Help in the local adjustments section for specific "how-tos".

Tony, thanks for the tips, I just saved the link to that particular post in my favorites so i can learn that A brush

here's 2 adjustments with just the "saturation" slider as suggested....

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Hey, Kawboy, they both look nice! I bet the B&W one would be really liked by your subject -- stylish!

Check settings here: click (due to large dimensions).

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Robert, thanks for contributing! Could you share the Raw processing work you did on this?

tonylong wrote in post #9238118
Robert, thanks for contributing! Could you share the Raw processing work you did on this?

robertn wrote in post #9237478
Check settings here: click (due to large dimensions).

USM on final photo in photoshop, but most of it in lightroom. For settings check link above.