How do you 'normally' shoot and process (and organise, if you like) your photos, etc?

Does anyone here use DxO Optics Pro? Downloaded a trial version last night (the FilmPack too, but I haven't tried that yet) and it's pretty extraordinary. Certainly shows up the non-flatness of my 28mm; kinda makes me want to stick with the 50mm for single-subject portraits for a while! If would probably slow me down to the point of never putting another image on Flickr, but it is tempting to build DxO into the workflow - particularly for wide-angle stuff which has obvious distortions.

Nick: did you take those 15mm fisheye shots in Raw by any chance? If so, could you send me one so I could have a play with it on DxO? (Although it's supposed to work on JPGs too, it doesn't seem to be able to correct lens anomalies unless you give it the Raw).

I use PTLens which is similar

The main thing that struck me about it was, seeing that DxO have gone to the trouble of building profiles for most DSLR/lens combinations out there - is it such a necessity for pros to have L-grade (or whatever Nikon's equivalent is) lenses? When you can take a pic with a mid-price prime and then eliminate all CA, sharpen all the way to corners, wipe out distortion, improve contrast, etc? With just a single click too.

yeah it is pretty amazing tech - I'm glad lens correction is built into the m43 standard so they can build smaller lenses overall

if they continue cramming pixels into these sensors though you'll probably still need high quality lenses just to match the resolving power of the sensors :/

more talk about processing please! returning to aperture after about half a year off and I've forgotten everything ;_;

for some reason shooting in raw means i no longer need to do the usual exposure and contrast/curve tweaks that i used to. not as much, anyway.

We seem to be discussing it in two different threads at the mo'! Perhaps bring all the PTLens/DxO chatter into here?
xp

feel free! also a nice, short video on the advantages of curves:

http://www.vimeo.com/10111531

I suspect I've been missing a trick or two with the Tone Curve in LR2.x, reading Milo Z's comment upthread and judging by some of the wacky shapes I see in some of my presets. Definitely seems easier to manipulate in a PS CS2+ style in LR3, but perhaps I never figured out how to do that with LR2. I'm generally pretty happy with a little S-curve and using the histogram sliders for everything else.

If they could incorporate specific lens distortion algorithms (a la DxO Optics Pro) in LR3 then I'd definitely be in. It's only maths, innit?

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 31 March 2010 09:03 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lens correction is already built into camera raw - if your camera has the right EXIF info (i.e. you're shooting a micro 43ds, LX3, or S90) it'll apply the correction automatically. of course you may want to do more than the manufacturer has dialed in (to remove excess CA etc.)

― ain't no thang but a chicken ㅋ (dyao), Wednesday, 31 March 2010 10:45 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Hmm, I guess the lens correction I'm limited to with ACR (with my Canon EF lenses) is just vignetting/CA (which is all there in the LR interface). Judging by the profound effect I see when applying the 40D+28/1.8 DxO module to images taken with that combo (and these are tiffs exported directly into DxO from the imported LR Raw), there's clearly no barrel distortion fixing going on with ACR.

I should experiment a bit more though. This is based on an hour last night...

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 31 March 2010 11:48 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

PS already has a lens correction tool I think, but it's pretty basic and not calibrated for individual lenses - it would be nice if Adobe incorporated it, but I don't see it happening...

as each lens has its own distortion characteristics, you need to specify how much correction to dial in for each particular lens, and if it's a zoom, at each particular focal length. so it's easy to do for a prime, but for a standard 24-70, you'll have up to 46 different possible distortion characteristics which you need to compensate for..

you should also give PTLens a try - much cheaper and does the same thing

― ain't no thang but a chicken ㅋ (dyao), Wednesday, 31 March 2010 12:20 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes, that seems pretty good. As fun as the FilmPack stuff is with DxO, I have no real use for much else that it does, as it duplicates a lot of Lightroom functionality. The one-click appeal of DxO is rather lost when you find it doing something you don't actually like (the auto noise reduction is not as subtle as LR, I don't think; though you can customise so it limits what it does in Auto mode) and then you have to start going through drop-down menus.

Also, it's not ideal calling external editors from within LR on images you may have already processed in LR; not only do you lose the changes in the export (OK, not with PS or PSE), what you get back is a TIFF or a JPG, so that copying the original LR adjustments over gives you something wildly different. It's tricky working out what the correct workflow would be with something like DxO; either you have to do everything in DxO or just accept that the nicely flat, sharp image you get back in can't be manipulated with quite as much freedom.

― Michael Jones, Wednesday, 31 March 2010 13:45 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

That's from the point at which we stopped talking specifically about LR3 (and I've employed a bit of Stalinist revisionism by deleting my sarky comments to gbx).

Hello, me again :)

I've just downloaded the trial version of Lightroom and now I know why MJ's pics look so much better than mine! But can I use it to add borders?

There's a plugin for that!

On the subject of Lightroom, what do people generally do with their metadata? Just leave it in the LR catalogue? Write it out to the raw or JPEG files for certain photos? Automatically create an XMP sidecar for every edit?

I did a transatlantic LR collaboration on some artwork recently and that was my introduction to the notion of exporting metadata as an XMP sidecar. Very handy. I could imagine it slowing things down a lot if you just left it on by default though? (I was prompted to think about this today at work, where, as a security measure, all USB memory sticks are going to banned shortly; I thought I better grab all the CR2/XMP files I can from personal stuff I've processed here in LR2.1 and LR3b2 while I still can).

looks like Adobe is making a play into DxO/ptlens's territory:

Adobe releases Lens Profile Creator
Adobe has posted a prerelease version of its Lens Profile Creator utility that enables creation of custom lens profiles for Photoshop CS5, ACR 6.1 and Lightroom 3. The process involves downloading and printing a checkerboard test chart from Adobe Labs, and shooting a series of RAW or non-RAW images. These can then be imported to the Lens Profile Creator to generate custom profiles for the Lens Correction feature in Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3. Furthermore, these profiles can also be shared via the company's user community. (12:24 GMT)

Jonesy; only just catching up with stuff after a busy couple of weeks. Only have those pictures in Jpeg, sadly; I'll take some RAW fish-eyes just for you, though!

Ah, too late now - my DxO trial has finished! Don't know whether I can download another trial...

Let me know if you can...

was kicking around an idea where we could have a post processing 'interpretation' thread where we all pass around one of our files and see how others on this board post-process it... any interest?

that would be fun! esp since I can't make pictures :(

count me in!

Good idea!

i'm in!

+1

alriiight going to have a busy one and a half weeks so look for a start date of around the start of July

idea/q: can google docs share RAW files? or could we just use hi def jpegs on someones Flickr? or create a dedicated Flickr that seeds starter files?

yah I think you can upload to google docs. or e-mail to a ILP gmail account and give everybody the password.

thanks for reminding me of this! I will write up the details tonight or tomorrow

yay

Wow, I can't believe I never knew about this board.

I usually process my images using lightroom, find a shot I like from the shoot, crop it, adjust the colour temp, contrast etc etc. Make a preset, batch process all the shots using the preset, then take the best ones into photoshop to retouch.

guys what is bridge for anyway

just to slow things down when you're almost done

i realized the other day that my LR library is woefully disorganized and i'm sort of determined to cut it down to size and get ride of a bunch of junk

do y'all generally just keep every single thing you shoot, or are you pretty ruthless. bear in mind that since i'm just shooting for fun, i don't feel the need to keep several versions of the same shot. three similar shots, one is better than the others imo? GONE

my lightroom s/n might not have been the world's most authentic, and now it's bust. Damnation. Over to Aperture it is.

william eggleston claims that he never shoots the same thing twice to remove the need for that doubt in the first place

Yeah I'm now trying to get myself to take a bunch of different shots rather than trying to get that one shot perfect (which I'm not great at anyway)

william eggleston claims that he never shoots the same thing twice to remove the need for that doubt in the first place

― dayo, Tuesday, August 23, 2011 3:22 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i like this

I agreed at first, but on second though I disagree w/that. If he means not spray-and-praying then sure, but some of the best shots can be the second or third exposures in succession, especially of people. Expressions are so fleeting, and with an SLR you by definition don't get to see the moment of exposure, so you can't ever be certain you've got it.

Looking at the contact sheets of photographers I love is illuminating. They nearly all take multiple shots. (Even Capa, who will make 2 or 3 frames of some things, but often times has the uncanny ability to know that he's got the shot and will stop after making one cracker, the bastard)

I keep everything, even utter crap. Disk space is cheap and stacking in Aperture/Lightroom makes it pretty easy to deal with multiples. I do kind of feel like I should delete some of them someday, but then 1TB more is always easier and quicker to do.

my disinclination to store everything is mostly due to the horror i feel when i, say, look in the storage closet or sort through boxes of old clothes.

like why am i keeping this, am i really going to make prints/publish/appreciate these 1000000 cack-handed snaps of boring parts of the city or w/e

I think Eggleston is just a dude who just 'is' and as such the rules warp around his presence

I think another thing to remember is that hit rates in photography are very very low, even for the greats, so don't get too hung up about having detritus in your library (that only you see) because every other photographer alive has the same problem.. even william eggleston

I haven't been much of a photog lately. :(

need inspiration.

tho I'm gonna shoot a mtb race on Sunday I think

action shots will be hard with the stock gf1 pancake, but I think postrace pain faces could be good?

Very little gets deleted on first pass, obvious blown exposures/focus/etc.. I usually don't really start looking and editing for months, then I narrow it down a lot.

Garry Winogrand didn't develop film for a year after shooting, so he could see things with a clearer eye.

your race already happened gbx but you don't need specialized equipment to shoot well at a race! remember lartigue's shot

http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/_img/lartigue.jpg

I would probably prefocus at a spot I knew the racers would pass, then do a burst shot?

that is a cool shot.

I showed up late and was only able to shoot te finish line. boring :(

thinking about presets....

right now i've got a preset that i just sorta made up, not modeled on anything (ie - i don't know about the filmstock ppl try to emulate), and i don't really know if it's stupid or not, or if i should try and download some or what.

i'm pretty drawn to the idea of keeping things as simple as possible, and just having two presets, one color and one b/w, and always starting from that (like you would with film), but maybe that is dumb/lazy? i dunno

That's probably a pretty good idea - I think setting those kinds of controls for yourself are good for learning, whether that's making your post-production fairly basic or only shooting with one lens or w/e.

yeah, i've got one (functional) camera, and one lens.

i'm trying to focus on the basics (hence all my questions about metering) and not get distracted by Lightroom shenanigans. the preset i use right now (basically just an s-curve, desaturated colors, v lightly boosted blacks, and i think that's it?) works for me now, though maybe it's sorta "trendy" looking, i guess? i like being able to slap it on p much anything i shoot because at least it means my output has a consistent "look." when i was going through the pics i took in uganda, i was messing with each photo individually and the results were wildly variable, and it took forever. i'd much rather focus on content when it comes to editing.

Plus, if you want to put together a portfolio of images, you want them to have some uniformity of style, so that's a good habit to get into.

Most of my photos get a basic s-curve, presence boost and sharpening, then I edit from there if I need to. Or I flatten the curve, boost presence, sharpen and export into Silver Efex 2 if I want to go B&W.

my habit is s-curve, up the black point, using the 'shadow' slider to bring out shadow detail (in aperture), maybe bring down the highlights a little bit with the highlight slider...

yeah you don't have to get crazy and having a more or less uniform 'aesthetic' makes your portfolio more cohesive. I think the important adjustment is the s-curve since digital sensors return linear data. don't overcook your photos.

I don't bother with multiple passes, because it adds soooo much time, and provides only a marginal improvement when I can even notice one.

ha, thank you. i had got into a rhhythm of starting scanning & then going to do the washing up or something, now scanning quickly is winning out. i'm trying the multiple exposure thing at the moment (it's one ... bright scan & one dim scan, or something), it's going okay. the noise is eventually soothing.

advice on scanning polaroids? they look deep and interestingly colored to my eyes but the scans look washed out and boring unless saturation is cranked up and then they look okay but not as appealing as the original.

looking forward to your replies,
dylan

dylannn - forgive me if this seems obvious but it sounds like the issue might be flatness more than desaturation? maybe bump contrast just a bit and/or futz with darkening the darks and lightening the lights specifically? i've been shifting to using lightroom for futzing with scanned prints (family photos) as much as for working with RAW files and the same toolkit translates very well ime. little s-curve, little vibrance, gets closer maybe. but i honestly haven't fucked with polaroid much at all and am eager to rescan the very few i do have on flickr that were done terribly ten years ago.