Post Processing

Every image requires some degree of Post Processing, i.e., software manipulation of the information recorded by the digital camera. Think of the camera's RAW file as the accumulation of all information that the camera can provide about a scene. This information will include how much light fell on each light-sensitive portion of the sensor and whatever other best estimates that the camera is capable of making. The human eye and brain, however, are still far more sensitive to that which the camera attempts to record. Post processing just gives the photographer an opportunity to refine the camera's captured information to better realize what their minds actually experienced at the time the image was taken.

The first task is to upload the RAW files (the "digital negative" directly produced by the camera) from the Compact Flash card (CF) to the computer. For this task, I use a CF card reader and Downloader Pro. This program gives me the ability to automatically create folders for the files and rename the files while they are being uploaded. This time-saving program is well worth its nominal cost.

Now that the files (images) are on my computer in date-stamped folders, I use Adobe's Bridge to preliminarily evaluate them. During this perusal, I discard any images that are obviously blurry or incorrectly exposed. I will also mark those images that I would like to investigate initially.

I've invested a good deal of time, money, and effort into acquiring these images so I find it best to be paranoid about losing them. Consequently, I always duplicate them on an external hard drive. The images will also be synced to this drive later once the day's processing has been concluded. For this process, I use Microsoft's Sync Toy, a very handy free utility.

I now begin processing those images that I have marked for initial processing. I select one of the RAW files and load it into Camera Raw whose primary purpose is to convert the RAW file into a non-proprietary format so that its contents may be manipulated by other programs such as Photoshop. A secondary purpose of the program, however, is to allow the photographer to perform a first round of global adjustments to the image.

The bane of all digital photographers is dust on the camera's sensor which blocks light and produces dark spots on the image. So the first step that I do in Camera Raw is to clone out these spots. Other early adjustments are straightening a crooked image and cropping it. I seldom crop an image from within Camera Raw but usually opt to do it, if required, in Photoshop. Straightening is seldom required as I use a spirit level on my tripod-mounted camera at all times.

All manner of global adjustments may now be done in Camera Raw. These include, but are not limited to, contrast, saturation, exposure, sharpening, white balance, and Chromatic Aberration (lens correction). Since the sensitivity of the camera's sensor is typically about 5 stops from black to white, the majority of these global adjustments allow me to modify the rather narrow range of recorded light so that the scene appears more realistic. Once finished with the global adjustments, the image is loaded into the latest version of Adobe's Photoshop.

Within Photoshop, I will first do any additional global adjustments to the image that I was unable to do from within Camera Raw. One such common adjustment is for white balance. Techniques that I've learned over the years let me do a better job from within Photoshop than from within Camera Raw. You will find a tutorial on this technique under Products / Tutorials.

Selective area adjustments may now be done. These make use of layer masks to isolate the changes to specific areas of the image. For instance, perhaps I want to increase the contrast in the clouds, or maybe sharpen just a person's eye. Each of these actions would have to be restricted to a specific area of the image.

When I am finally satisfied with the initial processing of the image, I save it, layers and all, in Photoshop's native format, PSD. Although I could have saved it in TIF format, I reserve that format for resized images ready for printing.

Printing

I've grown to like the quality of prints that are now possible with the latest generation of printers from Epson. Their K3 pigments and size of droplets produce prints of outstanding quality and longevity when combined with the latest generation of fine art paper.

Software is required to "drive" the printer, i.e., direct the printer where, when and how much of which ink to deposit on the paper. Generally people use the driver that is included with the printer. Unfortunately, printer manufacturers are faced with a dilemma: do they produce a driver that is optimized for fine photography or one for graphics? Ultimately, they produced a general-purpose driver that handles both areas but not in an optimal way. It is to address these specialized requirements in a driver that several companies have produced Raster Image Processors (RIPs) for fine-art photography. Though expensive, their results show better shadow and highlight details and truer colors.

I'm currently using the ImagePrint RIP from ColorByte Software for my printing requirements. It accepts the TIF files, which have been saved by Photoshop for print output, and drives my Epson 4400 to produce prints up to 16" wide and bounded only by the length of my roll of paper.