How did you learn/develop your processing style?

[Mp4]

I tend to change the lens profile , and go from standard pre-set to landscape (if doing a landscape) and then go for blacks/white and try and get it natural as possible and try and remember what i saw. But sometimes i push things to far (hue/sat) and get a colour cast going on and tend to like it. I don't seem to be consistent with a pre-set style but i will try and learn for weddings. If that fails i skim down the left hand side and pick a pre-set and experiment.

 

[An Exception]

^^^
Editing images from a wedding without a clear preset of your particular style is likely to take a long time. Unless you deliver some processed and the rest unprocessed, I can't bring myself to do this personally.
When you start shooting as a business, suddenly time spent processing isn't just a pain, it's money. If your processing is taking you twice as long, then your getting paid half as much. The difficulty with finding a consistent preset, is finding one that will work for any image, with this in mind it's best not to get 'too funky' with your style.

 

[Mp4]

^^^
Editing images from a wedding without a clear preset of your particular style is likely to take a long time. Unless you deliver some processed and the rest unprocessed, I can't bring myself to do this personally.
When you start shooting as a business, suddenly time spent processing isn't just a pain, it's money. If your processing is taking you twice as long, then your getting paid half as much. The difficulty with finding a consistent preset, is finding one that will work for any image, with this in mind it's best not to get 'too funky' with your style.

This is what i mean, i wont dive right in to my preset(s) selection i will try and find a balance for the first image depending what/where it is. and sync it to every photo , but then as i scan along some photos might be darker or need tweaking which then makes every other photo look out of place.

I need to look in to this more hell id love so show Raymond style photos to customers

Any advice or decent preset site would be handy

 

[An Exception]

Also helps to get some feedback from a fresh pair of eyes!

 

[An Exception]

This is what i mean, i wont dive right in to my preset(s) selection i will try and find a balance for the first image depending what/where it is. and sync it to every photo , but then as i scan along some photos might be darker or need tweaking which then makes every other photo look out of place.

I need to look in to this more hell id love so show Raymond style photos to customers

Any advice or decent preset site would be handy

You don't need to buy a preset for that, just do as Raymond describes, i.e. normalise the images first by correcting WB & Exposure, then add contrast and a little sat, don't worry about clipping detail in the shadows, actually clipping the blacks with the black slider with create contrast. Once happy, create a preset (preset should not include exposure or WB settings) that you can use as a general starting point. You will notice different images will need more or less saturation/contrast etc. so will need to do some manual adjustment.

 

[Mp4]

Thanks An Exception, i shall keep that in mind.

Why don't we do a edit RAW file thread? A selected photo from various people on the forum each week. And see how we each edit photos and bounce ideas?

Within reason i know a few wedding togs wouldn't want their presets shown

 

[Clown]

I had a thread like that. It was really interesting seeing what people did with the RAWs apart from the usual correcting of exposures and levels.

People got really creative on my thread in the Something Awful forums and turned my models into zombies but I wouldn't expect anything less from them

 

[dannyjo22]

normalise the images first by correcting WB & Exposure, then add contrast and a little sat,.

It's weird because at my local camera club when Critique is made of photos from the paid photographers they regularly suggest more saturation. I extremely rarely use the Sat slider. I will do local adjustments but I think the Sat slider is far too coarse and everything gets saturated at the same intensity. I go for the vibrance slider over the Sat slider 99% of the time

 

[An Exception]

It's weird because at my local camera club when Critique is made of photos from the paid photographers they regularly suggest more saturation.

Adding contrast, either by tone curve or contrast slider affects saturation in LR.
Also you will notice some colours become over-saturated more than others, usually yellows/oranges. If you want to adjust contrast independently from saturation, then you need to know photoshop.

Regarding what the 'paid' photographers say, more often than not paid photographers suck, in fact from looking at 'paid' weddings photographers work, you would think most were cowboys.
Pro's are often outclassed by passionate and talented amateurs who are just in it for fun.

 

[Ksanti]

Pro's are often outclassed by passionate and talented amateurs who are just in it for fun.

While I agree in essenece, I think we need to be careful here. You get a few people who are actually incredible photographers but the need to pay bills has meant they've taken on increasingly dull clients and their work has suffered, while amateurs need only shoot that which they want to shoot. You'll get a few idiots who just picked up a DSLR and thought that was it, so now they can charge, but for the most part pro photographers know what they're doing.

 

[An Exception]

While I agree in essenece, I think we need to be careful here. You get a few people who are actually incredible photographers but the need to pay bills has meant they've taken on increasingly dull clients and their work has suffered, while amateurs need only shoot that which they want to shoot. You'll get a few idiots who just picked up a DSLR and thought that was it, so now they can charge, but for the most part pro photographers know what they're doing.

It's probably different from genre to genre, but in terms of wedding photography, most don't seem to be very good, and allot are truly awful. Perhaps with other genres like fashion, it's harder for cowboys to operate.

 

[King Damager]

It's weird because at my local camera club when Critique is made of photos from the paid photographers they regularly suggest more saturation. I extremely rarely use the Sat slider. I will do local adjustments but I think the Sat slider is far too coarse and everything gets saturated at the same intensity. I go for the vibrance slider over the Sat slider 99% of the time

I was reading a book by Scott Kelby the other day, and he actually mentioned that for most of his portrait stuff he rarely uses Sat. If you want to bring out colour in a picture for portraits he says he much prefers vibrance over saturation, as it tends to be much more kinder to skin tones.

kd

 

[Ksanti]

If you're messing with skin tones then do it in photoshop. Lightroom isn't good enough for proper control over that sort of stuff, which you really need layering for.

 

[King Damager]

That was actually the point I think Don't use Sat, it messes with skin tones, something you don't really want to be doing, vibrance is much less intrusive on skin tones.

kd

 

[jonney_joop]

i use presets

 

[Ksanti]

I don't understand how people use presets that cover everything. I've now got saved tone curves and the like that adjust the palette of the image but I would never have preset for the exposures etc. as they differ from image. I tend to work properly on one image then copy develop settings - paste - tweak for each image I'm going to use.

 

[King Damager]

I don't understand how people use presets that cover everything. I've now got saved tone curves and the like that adjust the palette of the image but I would never have preset for the exposures etc. as they differ from image. I tend to work properly on one image then copy develop settings - paste - tweak for each image I'm going to use.

I'd like to build up a few base presets. You might want to do a slight sat boost on all your images from RAW or such like, but I agree that each image needs its own adjustment.

kd

 

[Clown]

Creative Live had a seminar on workflow. I can't remember who was running it but they had about a million presets to help improve time taken to process things. I think they basically use it instead of randomly pulling sliders.

Check out SLR Lounge on Youtube for a similar system.

 

[King Damager]

I have aims to set up basic presets.

I currently only have a copyright stuff, but eventually I plan on basically having metadata done pretty much solely on presets, with only a couple of nongeneric tags added in to each shot.

They're very useful for sets, where you can apply them on import.

kd

 

[Raymond Lin]

Set presets for export too.

I have one for Facebook, client proofing, client disc, forums, blog.

Click the one you want, it selects the size, type of watermark (or not) and puts it in the correct folders even.