Connector4you From Canada, joined May 2001, 906 posts, RR: 2 Posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 1 day ago) and read 1282 times:
Witnessing so many crystal clear pictures on this web site I was wandering if there is any "standard editing sequence" that professional photographers would generally agree upon as a …MUST BE DONE BEFORE UPLOADING !?
Assuming that you've got a 3000x2000 raw photo, what would your favorite editing sequence look like?
Mirage From Portugal, joined May 1999, 3111 posts, RR: 19 Reply 1, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 23 hours ago) and read 1204 times:
I'm not a pro but what I would do with that on PSP5 is:
-apply unsharp mask with radius 1; strength 70%-100%; Clipping 1
-crop and resize to 1024x...px
- adjust midtones, color and contrast if necessary
- cleaning of white dots and scratches with the clone tool
- apply the unsharp mask again
Da fwog From United Kingdom, joined Aug 1999, 867 posts, RR: 11 Reply 2, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 22 hours ago) and read 1192 times:
I also use PSP5, and my sequence is similar (bear in mind I'm working with a digital image 2160x1440 pixels from the D30):
1. rotate if necessary and crop
2. apply some sharpening (if I have rotated in step 1) - this is usually just the "sharpen" rather than unsharp mask tool - but it varies depending on what I feel the pic requires
3. resize down to 1024 x ...
4. crop vertically if too big
5. adjust gamma/brightness/contrast/colour balance
6. apply unsharp mask
7. add copyright message
Note that saying "apply unsharp mask" in step 6 does rather simplify things - because you need to adjust the parameters depending on the pic you are sharpening. I think this is where many people go wrong - they apply the same level of sharpening to all pictures regardless, so end up with some that are too soft, and some which are over-sharpened.
In addition, pictures sometimes take several attempts to get right before I am happy. Sometimes I will do 2 or 3 different crops of a pic before choosing which one I am happiest with. You should be prepared to go back several steps, or even to the beginning, if you are not happy with the way the end image turns out.
Da fwog From United Kingdom, joined Aug 1999, 867 posts, RR: 11 Reply 5, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 20 hours ago) and read 1154 times:
Unsharp mask? It varies from pic to pic. My base setting is radius 1.0, 100%, clipping 9. However, I frequently drop the radius down to 0.8, 0.7 or 0.6 in order to avoid jagged edges, and adjust the strength between about 50% and 150% where a pic is already quite sharp, or needs more sharpening than usual. I only generally adjust the clipping value when I have a problem picture - in which case I could well spend 10 minutes or more experimenting with sharpening. In the end, if I'm not happy with the result, the pic doesn't get uploaded.
Ckw From UK - England, joined Aug 2010, 324 posts, RR: 19 Reply 6, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 20 hours ago) and read 1155 times:
Usually working in Corel Photopaint :
1 rotate/crop if necessary
2 adust tone curve if required
3 mask all except sky and apply noise reduction
4 adjust colour balance as required
5 resample to A.net size
6 apply unsharp mask - usually radius 1 threshold 0, percentage depending on image
Craigy From United Kingdom, joined Jun 2001, 1118 posts, RR: 0 Reply 7, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 5 hours ago) and read 1137 times:
Source image: 2.6 megapixel digital image.
Using PSP7,
Rotate image if required
Unsharp mask using 1.5/50/5 or 1.0/50/5 only if required
Adjust brightness slightly if absoloutly necessary
Resize to 1024 and crop to 750 high
If this simple editing doesn't work, I usually forget about the photo and move on to the next.
I am really glad this thread was started, as I have one photo I want to persevere with - Air Mauritius A340 on finals for MAN. Was rejected for 'jaggies'. This is the only regular A340 to MAN that I know of, and since it arrives about 8pm it will be next summer before I have a chance to shoot it again. I will experiment with the radius as suggested above.
Craig.
Mirage From Portugal, joined May 1999, 3111 posts, RR: 19 Reply 8, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks 5 hours ago) and read 1130 times:
For a better understanding of the unsharp mask parameters here is a little quote from a great URL adress that EDIpic gave on another topic:
"The Unsharp Mask dialog has three parameters. Looking at the dialog in Figure 6.33(c), there is Radius, which specifies the relative width of the halo/shadow created by the mask. The parameter named Amount controls the relative magnitude of the dip and the peak created on each side of the edge. Finally, Threshold specifies the difference in pixel values that must exist across the edge for the Unsharp Mask to be applied. Thus, if Threshold is set to 25, adjacent pixels whose difference in pixel value is less than 25 are not sharpened. An important fact is that the Unsharp Mask is applied individually to each color channel, R, G, and B; the results are then combined."
Connector4you From Canada, joined May 2001, 906 posts, RR: 2 Reply 9, posted (10 years 6 months 3 weeks ago) and read 1107 times:
Very interesting indeed. While everyone seems to agree onto choosing and using almost same editing commands, different priorities are evident trough out processing. Taking the RESIZE command as a reference I see three tendencies here:
1. Using sharpening command before and after RESIZE
Mirage, Da fwog,
2.Using sharpening command before RESIZE
Craigy
3.Using sharpening command after RESIZE
Ckw
Many people on this forum expressed concerns on photo quality losses due to resizing so I think that the photo editing sequence should be centered around this RESIZE command. Personally I am in the first category but I also do some experiments using two different software (back and forth) in editing the very same photo. So far no spectacular results… Any other ideas, opinions ?
Da fwog From United Kingdom, joined Aug 1999, 867 posts, RR: 11 Reply 10, posted (10 years 6 months 2 weeks 6 days 22 hours ago) and read 1098 times:
it's definitely an ART and not a SCIENCE! Knowing roughly what steps to do is only a starting point - experience points you towards what will work for the more "difficult" shots.
Ckw From UK - England, joined Aug 2010, 324 posts, RR: 19 Reply 11, posted (10 years 6 months 2 weeks 6 days 10 hours ago) and read 1083 times:
My logic for resampling is as follows - I tend to scan large to get as much info as possible from the pic. Once scanned, every subsequent process throws info away (adjustments to sharpness, brightness, colour) all alter pixels from the original scan and often remove some sublties (by combining pixels) altogether. So I'm inclined to use as few processes as possible, and do them only once! Since signifcant resampling will inevitably require some sharpening, I leave this process til last.
I've not seen any real benefit in 2 sharpening steps - indeed this is much more likely to introduce the dreaded jaggies. I am experimenting with selected channel sharpening (eg. splitting the image into channels and applying sharpening selectively), but to be honest, at A.net resoultions I find it hard to see any gain.
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