Digital Manipulation.
 

I have been wondering about the best ways to treat your pictures in Photo manipulation programmes.
I use Photoshop elements, and generally only sharpen, re-size, crop and use auto levels, not necessarily in that order, or all of them :) .

Do any of you have opinions on a best order to use on a photo,eg. crop first, or sharpen perhaps, it will be interesting for me to see if there isa trend or if everyone goes about things differently.

Brian.:confused:

Not sure if there is a right or wrong sequence but this is what I always do (PSCS2) after processing the RAW file.

1. Crop
2. Levels
3. Shadows & Highlights
4. Increase saturation if required
5. Smart Sharpen.

Then save as TIFF and from the Tiff file produce a jpeg if required.

Thanks Roy, I am suprised this did not generate a bigger response but thanks for your input.


brian

I am always changing my own process but currently doing the following on the RAW file:

1. Colour Balance
2. Levels (brightness + contrast)
3. Saturation
4. Any Cropping required
5. Export to TIFF
6. Close the RAW file WITHOUT saving! - This is my 'master slide' or 'negative'.

Then basically in PS/PSP:
1. Sort out any noise etc.
2. Check colour balance, levels etc.
3. Save the TIFF and mark as read-only (this is now my repeatable start point for printing, JPEG etc.)
4. Re-size to what I require (e.g. web or print)
5. Sharpen
6. Print and close without saving or save as JPEG.

As far as I know, sharpening is the LAST thing you should do. Activities such as noise removal and re-sizing will change the 'sharpness' of the image.

Cheers, Mark.

Cheers Mark some good points there, and a few things i should consider.

Thanks for your response, i am going to have too broaden my baseline and take a few risks.

Regards brian.

Hi cuddy

There's no need to take risks with your original images providing you don't overwrite them with your digitally mastered copy, I assume it's the originals you're concerned about? If you always remember to save the newly mastered copy with a new filename and not just save, then you will always have the original to fall back on as many times as you like.

nirofo.

Cropping and Noise removal/lessening (if needed) should be the first things done with sharpening the last, in between is a matter of preference :)