Processing is at least half of making images in my view. I’m looking forward to seeing Kevin’s routine. But I guess he’ll be using Capture One, so I thought I’d make a list of the steps I take with most of the images I process in Lightroom CC Classic.
Nothing remarkable here so I’d appreciate any tips about a better/quicker approach.
I shoot with an Olympus OMD EMI (MkIII) so my raw files are in 4:3 ratio, which I like, and about 21MP which is just fine for almost every purpose including PDF booklets — my most common output — or printing up to A2 size. Or, if I shoot in Hi-Resolution mode up to 80MP, which I don’t do often.
These twelve steps may seem like a lot but they typically take only a couple of minutes on images I want to process, especially since I’ve created presets for a few of them.
1. Import into Lightroom CC Classic using the Adobe ‘Colour + lens + NR’ develop preset
2. Open in “Develop” tab. Possibly apply the Adobe ‘Landscape’ or ‘Portrait’ preset as a starting point
3. Crop and Transform as necessary. There’s not much room to crop in a µ-4/3 file so good shot discipline (zoom including foot-zoom) is pretty important. I often crop in un-constrained mode because I’m usually trimming intrusions or distractions from the edge of the frame or moving the subject to a different position in the frame. I prefer to stick to a 4:3 (or sometimes 16:9 for ‘cinema’ effect) but I’m not religious about it. I won’t trim a distraction if I can use the correction brush instead; but I find all but the simplest LR CC corrections awkward/unreliable (PS, or Affinity Photo especially, are much better but then I end up with a TIF file)
4. Correction brush where necessary/feasible: almost always distractions. Rarely, a sensor spot visible against eg. a clear sky. OMD-EM1 III ‘ultra-sonic’ sensor clean seems to eliminate most spots.
5. AUTO tone button as a start
6. White Balance I almost always leave as ‘As Shot’ according to the Auto-WB setting in my camera. Very accurate. Occasionally I try ‘Auto’ in LR then the colour ‘dropper’ (which is a poor imitation of the ACR colour. dropper). But if adjustments are needed I do them by hand using the Auto or dropper settings as a check/suggestion.
7. Basic tone adjustments to the AUTO settings:
(a) I click in the Histogram, first, to drag different ranges (darks, shadows, mid-tones, highlights) as a quick approximation. I pull back hightlights that ‘climb the wall’ on the right or darks/shadows that bunch up at the left wall.
(b) I hold the alt/option key while dragging the Basic tone sliders for Blacks, Whites, Shadows, Highlights in that order to refine the boundaries of the tone.
(c) I add contrast with the ‘de-haze’ and clarity sliders and/or the texture slider where appropriate globally
(d) LR AUTO is conservative on vibrance & saturation so I may adjust, particularly vibrance, but rarely by much.
8. Effects slider vignette (-10 to -20), possibly, adjusting the amount for the overall tone (high-key, low-key) of the image and location of the subject
9. Tone Curve
(a) I usually start with the non-parametric curve simply dragging the central point up or down to affect the overall ‘key’ to the image. Occasionally, I slightly pull down the highlight extremity or push the dark extremity up a little.
(b) Then I adjust the parametric curve, usually in a gentle ‘s’. This is the reason I start development by keeping the histogram clear of both highlights and darks extremes. I can achieve finer and smoother control of both in the parametric tone curve. I find the ‘boundary’ markers for lights and darks on the base of the parametric curve are pretty useless. But the ‘center’ adjustment can have visible effects when needed.
10. Local adjustments
(a) Often, one or two (preset) de-haze+clarity linear gradients e.g. to bring out cloud textures and/or to balance the overall vertical brightness of the image: typically less highlights/luminance at the base, more progressively in the mid-ground and top of the image. But the strength of luminance gradients in the final image depends on subject matter, ‘key’ etc They are mostly used to help draw the eye of the viewer.
(b) Sometimes, a radial gradient added to the main subject and surrounds (especially ‘higher’ in the frame) to slightly increase ‘exposure’ values (+0.25) while controlling highlights/shadows (-/+) and, usually, to increase local sharpness (+50)/clarity/texture to draw attention
(c) Occasionally, I make some small adjustments to the HSL sliders at this point (selecting “All” by default to see all sliders at once) because the OLY sensor sometimes seems to oversaturate the red/yellow hues. Again using a preset, I change the saturation and luminance, in opposite directions, of the warm tones (usually not the cool tones) by a conservative amount maintaining a smooth ‘ramp’ in the changes between adjacent tones (‘red’, ‘orange’, ‘yellow’…)
11. Detail: global sharpening and NR as required. I usually check the sharpening amount in the (too-small) detail window set to 200% (right click in the window for the option) while holding the alt/option key to see the effects more clearly in monotone. Ditto for the Detail and Masking sliders. I have some presets for these adjustments since they are frequently the same between images at the same ISO. Typical numbers for my OLY sensor are amount 75-85, radius 1.1, detail 25-50, masking 75+. An alternate ‘high-radius+low-amount’ approach sometimes works better (amount 30, radius 2.6, detail 50+, masking 50)
12. Calibration: Most of my images are in colour, so sometimes I add a final “pop” to the image by increasing the saturation of each of the R, G, B channels separately using the ‘Calibration’ sliders. I have made a few simple presets: I change only the saturation in the ratio of roughly 3:2:5 (R, G, B) with the Blue saturation boosted by say “25” or at most “50”.
That’s it (I process monochrome images slightly differently). YMMV, of course.
