Talk About Your Post Production Digital Methods

Forgive me if I don't nail this one down cuz I think the topic is kinda broad, but I was curious as to you methods/parameters for your media (mostly, pictures but video as well).

Do you capture your digi images in a particular format (JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc)?
Do you save your originals or manipulate them to save space (granted, storage is always becoming cheaper)?
What type of software and what methods/parameters do you use for photos you intend for the web (image size, format, file size, etc.)?
Any other thoughts that might be helpful to me and others?

Thanks!

Oh, BTW, I capture digi in both RAW and JPEG
I save the originals
I generally use one of the many versions of Adobe Photo Delux
I'm still experimenting with size and file size

 

Well, I take a picture and my camera - a Canon PowerShot A640 - gives a .jpg file. I save the pics. With Corel Photo-Paint or IrFanView I resize the pic - usually in 1200 x 900 pixels - and save this in lower compression. For my homepage I use IrFanView to get a new name and a second pic 350 pixels broad.

Wolfgang

 

I shoot 1600x1200 JPEGs and save everything good. I end up tossing about 10% of what I shoot (poor comps, poor lighting, dupes, mistakes). I just rebuilt my computer and have VAST amounts of storage capacity. I usually let the photos "age" a couple of days before I toss anything at all. Otherwise I get trigger happy and throw away interesting pics that I should probably keep.
When I go to post them on TrainBoard, I usually crop the image, removing extra foreground and other non-subject stuff. Then resize via IrfanView to 640x480. But I keep the large uncropped versions at home.

 

I shoot Large Fine JPG. I know I should shoot raw, but I do almost no image manipulation afterwords, so it's not much of a problem. I rarely save originals and I discard probably around 40% of what I shoot. I use Microsoft Vista's Photo editor for basic changes to scanned photos to color correct and Nero or the Gimp for anything else as I'm opposed to paying for photoshop.

For web stuff I use easy thumbnail creator to shrink it down to 640 Max on a side and then again to 150 MAX on a side for thumbs which I use with MySPGM.

 

I shoot large files w/ a 10.2MP camera. My camera is a Nikon D40X. JPEG. I file all of these pictures full size in appropriate directories.

The software I use is either NIKON Capture NX or DELL Image Expert. For posting or whatever, I resize the pictures as appropriate and put them in separate "upload" or processing files. The originals stay in their "holding tank". I also purge my PC of the large originals periodically using an external hard drive. I have had my PC "crash" and lost some valuable pictures. Fortunately, I was able to get most back from family, friends, and a few I had on a disk. No more. I use that external hard drive like a crutch.

For printing I use an HP PhotoSmart, wireless, 7460. I too am aware of the "RAW" format, but don't use it. Mostly because I have just not taken the time to "fool" with it. I am sure if the urge hit me to really "get into" the picture processing thing, I could do it, but there are too many other aspects where I would rather put my energy.

 

For most purposes, I shoot 3008 x 2000 jpgs, although I will shoot raw or tiff if I feel the subject needs it. I have my own custom settings for sharpness and color. I shot jpgs because the camera usually does a better job of rendering than I can do with Photoshop and a raw file. Initially I save about 50 percent of originals, sometimes much less.

When I call up an original to work on it in Photoshop, I save the work as a native Photoshop file (.psd), so I always have the untouched original. I'll save it as a tiff for publication if the magazine wants a tiff--many do just fine with psds. I'll save it as a jpg for the Web, and downsize it with Photoshop, again saving the large file.

This results in an original, say DSC_7447 at 3.8 Mbytes, a psd file (named 7447Mooose, for example) of about 17 Mbytes, and a web image of about 100 Kbytes. Tiffs end up at about 17 Mbytes also.

More later.

 

Forgot to clarify that if I shrink it for web, I still keep the original. I just meant I don't keep a preprocessed full size original.

 

a) I shoot fine .jpgs, a 6 MP image.
b) Then edit it with MS Photo Editor and IrFanView. I almost always have to adjust the color to improve the photo to where it should be. Use the sharpening in IrFanView as well
c) Organize the photos in a step by step set of folders, i.e.: the folders are
...Raw..>..Renamed..>..Cropped/Color Adjusted...>...Resized..>...Captions
d) Captions are added with MS Paint, which also resizes them for web posting

 

I don't worry about storage, as I have a terabyte of disk. I don't worry about in-camera storage, as I now have some 8-gbyte cards that are pretty hard to fill up. I save as psd files because it's a lossless format; jpgs are not. I really don't see a significant difference between an original jpg and an original raw file--yes, there is some, and when I need it, I shoot raw or tiff. If I had truly pro lenses, I would shoot raw all the time. My "prosumer" Nikon lenses (12-24, 24-85, 70-300) just are not sharp enough to really make the raw images that much better with the Nikon DX size sensor.

I can do all sorts of things in Photoshop, as I've been working with it professionally since it came out. For me there's a tradeoff between letting the camera do the work or doing it myself.

 

You have been warned!

Do you capture your digi images in a particular format (JPEG, TIFF, RAW, etc)? Almost exclusively JPEG. RAW on occassion.
Do you save your originals or manipulate them to save space (granted, storage is always becoming cheaper)? All of the above. I need to seriously do some housecleaning.
What type of software and what methods/parameters do you use for photos you intend for the web (image size, format, file size, etc.)? Right now, a combination of PS Elements (v3 I think), Picasa, and PSP (v7 or 8). I also have a nifty little command line resize tool that I cannot recall the name of.
Any other thoughts that might be helpful to me and others? Backup your stuff.



Repeat.


BACKUP YOUR STUFF!!!!


I don't think you heard me....

BACKUP YOUR STUFF!!!!

• I have received at least four e-mails in the past few years. No, you cannot often gain emotions via e-mail, but these four e-mails were CLEARLY from grown men crying. (and, I'm not kidding) Most attempting to get copies of stuff they'd sent to me, telling their hard drive is "at the doctor".
• Only one, to my knowledge, recovered greater than 70% of the "valuable" data.
• It costs $1200 to TRY recovery in most cases. A good USB Hard Drive will run you about $100. I saw a 750GB UBS/FW/eSATA drive on sale at Best Buy the other day for $139.
• It doesn't hurt to peridically dump stuff to DVD as well.
• As a amateur/pro-am photographer, your next computer purchase should include RAID-1 hard drives, or if a laptop, a dedicated NAS device. If you can afford tape backup, do that too.
• I haven't found an affordable web-based backup service for large files, but your "finished product" folder should be out there in the ethosphere somewhere, encryped of course.
• I am an IT professional, and I am not immune. Two years ago I lost about a months' worth of photos, including one of my son and I that I would easily pay $1200 to recover if I had the money. (and eventually will) I was running RAID 1 and hit the jackpot with both drives failing within a few days of each other. (and yes, I should have acted when the first one failed.)

If any of you need help coming up with a good backup strategy, I will gladly and freely offer to assist.

Doug

 

I'm not a big fan of the consumer Raid-1 solutions out there. Personally, I think you're better off back up to another hard drive, or, if you're going to be storing something of such value that $1200 might be worth it, you should step up to a more legitimate storage solution.

Not that I'm against raid in general, just not particularly impressed with the consumer solutions. Heck, for me, I'd just as soon find a tape backup solution as there would be less DVDs involved.

 

With four 250 Gbyte drives, I always keep two backups, each on a separate drive. I also burn a DVD now & then. It's not unusual for me to come back from a 3 week vacation in Alaska with 8 or more Gbytes of images, which I may trim by 75% or more before burning.

 

most of the time i shoot jpegs at full resolution. store them on a raid-5 nas as well as a raid-10 fibre channel san plus on an usb disk stored at a different location.

pics for the website will be cut/shrunk to size and then stored on my webserver. both webserver and mailserver (two physical machines) will be disk image backed up at least once a months. application backups weekly.


shrinking/resizing of the pics is done using irfanview since it supports a batch mode. resize hundreds of pics with a few mouseclicks.

 

My post-processing is constantly evolving. I have been shooting RAW then converting to JPEG using Nikon Picture Project for 2 years. The first year I worked with Canon Image Browser for editing then switched to Photoshop. I use Picture Project for creating back-up CDs. Presently, I'm converting my RAW images to lossless TIFF for editting.

 

Mine is also. Shooting in "Fine JPG" in Nikon terms, results in a roughly 4:1 compression that, on first opening, should not result in much image quality loss, given the sophisticated compression algorithm. But, if I save that first opening also at 4:1 compression, then I start losing image quality to a larger degree compared to the original. And the losses grow as I continue to open and save in any compression scheme.

Unless there is a compelling reason to shoot in RAW, I shoot in JPG, but save the very first opening in a loss-less format, usually .psd in Photoshop, keeping the original JPG in case I really screw up the .psd file.

Now, once the file is opened and saved in .psd, I use whatever features of Photoshop will improve the image. My major tools are the "Shadow/Highlight" and "Levels" adjustments. The shadow/hightlight adjustment lets me compensate for harsh lighting situations, so I can bring out the shadows while holding back the highlights. The Levels adjustment is my first try if an image is underexposed in the mid-tones--the highlights and shadows are OK, but the mid-tones are underexposed. We used to do this in the darkroom with, respectively, under-developing the paper, or dodging/burning. It's much more precise with digital.

I rarely have to fiddle with color balance. I have a nice, calibrated Apple Cinema monitor, but I'm just not very efficient at it--it takes me a long time.

It's only after these steps that I try to pop up an image. Here I use the brightness/contrast adjustments. Yep, I'm almost undoing my first two steps, but not exactly. By using shadow/highlight and levels first, I know all my pixels are still there with a "good" value. That is, they are not totally burned out in the highlights, nor totally black in the shadows.

So now I can brighten the highlights, and enhance the contrast. I usually brighten the image, at this stage, by about 10%, and increase the contrast by about 15%. But not all the time! Some images need no manipulation whatsoever!

With model railroad photography, that's about it. Out in the real world, however, I'm often shooting in pouring rain, just for example. Then I'll start looking at, for this example, whether the image is best in the pouring rain, do I have to enhance the rain or reduce it, etc.

All of this can be done in the film camera and in the darkroom, with educated guesses about exposure in the camera, developing times, enlarger exposures times, etc.

Ran out of time.