Processing digital images.

[James]

Hi Folks

Can anyone recommend a good book which would instruct me in processing digital images. I have Photoshop 7 and a manual but would like a book that gives me instructions on workflow i.e. what do you do first etc. from download to filing. There must be good reasons (I presume) to do things in a certain order?

James

[James]

Wot no takers?

James

[postcardcv]

Personally I've never read a book on the suject, just picked things up from playing with images and reading various website. I'm sure you'll find some useful stuff on our sister website www.worldphotographforum.com

[James]

Personally I've never read a book on the suject, just picked things up from playing with images and reading various website. I'm sure you'll find some useful stuff on our sister website www.worldphotographforum.com

Thanks.
I had read on this forum that it is important to process images in the correct order which immediately raised two questions in my ignorant mind i.e. why? and what order? Thats why I thought it was worth asking.

James

[Claymore]

Hi James,
I bought a good book on PS7 called Photoshop 7 At your finger tips by Jason Cranford Teague. Its pretty good and i picked mine up on Amazon for a fiver.
Cheers
Brian

[gordon g]

I use a book by Martin Evening - Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for photographers. This isnt light reading by any means, but does give explanations for why, not just how, things are done in a particular way. Like Peter, I have mainly just picked things up by trial and error, but that book is a good reference.
For what it's worth, my workflow in PS7 goes something like this (working with TIFFS derived from a RAW coverter or my slide scanner, but the principals should be similar for JPEG):
1 - crop, if necessary. This means any further adjustments will only be on data I actually want, speeding things up a little - at least with my very slow old computer. Also at this point I will remove dust spots and clone out unwanted bits.
2 - levels. Set white and black points, taking care to preserve highlight detail as much as possible.
3 - curves. Allows more subtle changes in tone response, brightness and contrast, as by changing the shape of different bits of the curve, you can affect different tonal ranges specifically
4 - if applicable, grayscale convesion, usually using the channel mixer
5 - resize as appropriate
6 - sharpen. I use unsharp mask mainly, though there are a lot of different ways of sharpening which I'm sure others will be better informed about.

When shooting RAW, a lot of the exposure management (steps 2 and 3) is done prior to conversion to TIFF, with only fine tuning done in PS

[TBMike]

"Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers" by Tim Grey and Ellen Anon is my present read/study book. Very inclusive. I highly recommend!
Prior to that was Photoshop CS2 classroom in a Book.
Both I felt were quite good. The CIB for CS3 only adds items to do with the new features otherwise the same book.

[James]

Very helpful all

Thanks

James

[pe'rigin]

James,


I'd go with what Gordon has written, if you can master 1&2, (especially 2) then that takes care of 95% of the problems. H&S looks easy but to do properly does take time. On colour that should be corrected automatically when you set your H&S. Never trust your eye with a monitor even if it has been calibrated, always go by the numbers in 'info' to correct. If you can get your head around 'additive' and 'subtractive' colour then this would be a bonus.

[James]

James,


I'd go with what Gordon has written, if you can master 1&2, (especially 2) then that takes care of 95% of the problems. H&S looks easy but to do properly does take time. On colour that should be corrected automatically when you set your H&S. Never trust your eye with a monitor even if it has been calibrated, always go by the numbers in 'info' to correct. If you can get your head around 'additive' and 'subtractive' colour then this would be a bonus.

I can get my head round things given a good reference so will buy the book. I have had problems due to trusting my monitor but never realised there was an alternative. Looking forward to finally understanding processing at last.

Thanks

James

[RAH]

I agree mostly with what Gordon has written, but I think that step 5 and 6 should be in the opposite order (sharpen and then "resize as appropriate"), followed by a 2nd sharpen if resizing down was done.

In other words, for just perfecting your images, you do NOT resize them. Later, if you need to do it, say for putting on a web page, you make new images (i.e. different names), and almost always after a size reduction you need to do a sharpen.

Pe'rigin, what is "H&S"? You talk about it as though it was mentioned earlier, but I can't find it. Is "S" sharpness? Saturation?

[pe'rigin]

Sorry RAH,

Highlight and shadow. I must learn not to keep abbreviating.

regards

P (there I go again)