Post Processing Tips and Tricks for Beginners

First Things First

Here is my preferred order of post processing and photo touchup process using the software of your choice. These are just a guideline that hit the high points as the settings are numerous and unlimited when it comes to post processing photographs. This guideline is based on a photograph of still life. When you start getting into the 'artistic' side of photography, rules are made to be broken!

1. Adjust white balance. Very important to get this correct BEFORE making any other changes to the photo. Cameras see shades of gray, so the white balance can be thrown off by colors in the image or various lighting conditions.
2. Adjust Camera Profile if needed. I usually select camera standard, camera landscape, or the camera vivid profile.
3. Adjust exposure.
4. Adjust clarity to add punch - zoom to 100% to apply with precision.
5. Adjust vibrance.
6. Adjust saturation.
7. Do all the cropping in Adobe Camera Raw if I'm using a program that uses it.
8. I recommend to use noise reduction in Camera Raw and not Adobe Elements, if required.
9. Always apply sharpening at the very end. I usually add a touch of sharpening when my RAW files are exported to my final JPG file. 

Remember, these initial settings are global and will be applied to the entire photo. If you need to apply any of these with precision within certain elements of a photo, you will need to use a software with masking capabilities. Masking will allow you to leave portions of a photo unedited and apply just the manipulation you want in specific areas of the photo as you delineate.

Optimizing images for the Web

If you are posting your photographs online, you will need to optimize them for the web. You will have to select the proper format, resolution, and quality settings. Web images need to be efficient for quick loading but also of a high enough quality that they still look good on a screen. It’s a balancing act to keep the file size small while at the same time maintaining a decent quality that is visually appealing. There are no hard and fast settings to create the best web image; the process requires judgment and a good eye.

File Formats and Onscreen Quality

Every file format has varying compression options. JPG and GIF are the most commonly used formats. The JPG format preserves the broad color range and subtle brightness variations of continuous-tone images such as photographs. JPGs can represent images using millions of colors. The GIF format performs well at compressing solid-color images and images with areas of a lot of repetitive color throughout. More along the lines of logos, vector art and illustrations with type. It uses 256 colors to represent the image and supports background transparency.

Adobe Photoshop™ ($$), Lightroom™ ($), or Elements™ ($) for Post Processing?

Digital Photo Editing Software

Want to use a more user-friendly software beyond that supplied by your camera manufacturer? Maybe you bought a used camera and don’t even know where to start.

Adobe™ is the graphic editing king. Whether you’re on a Mac or PC-based system, Adobe is a no-brainer. I know there are some open sourced competitors out there at this time, but I haven’t used them, so I cannot advise.

The three Adobe products you should focus your attention are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Adobe Photoshop Elements (plus 'Premiere' if you will be editing digital video). Yes, they all have “Adobe Photoshop” in their name. I am going to simplify and drop the wordiness.

Photoshop

Let me put this into perspective. Photoshop is at the very tip top far end of the price spectrum. Adobe products have recently in the past couple of years went to all cloud-based programs and monthly subscriptions. So you would buy an older version to install and use on your Windows based PC. Adobe Photoshop CS6 was the last stand-alone version released. You can purchase Photoshop CS6 at walmart.com, tigerdirect.com or bestbuy.com (around $699 at the time of this writing). Good news is that it is well used, loved, and tested by many, many users. So I still have no problem recommending it if you’ve got the money and the time to learn it. It is the definition of high-end editing software.

Lightroom

Begin by visiting Adobe.com and downloading a 30-day fully functional trial of their Lightroom product. Price-wise, it’s the middle of the road. In a nutshell, Lightroom is for lighter photo processing but better at processing a lot of files. It is built for speed but still has all the usual features you need, including straightening, one-box chromatic aberration removal, touch-up brushes to remove spots, and editing features. The difference is that you are not working with layers. Working directly with the raw file, Lightroom keeps track of all your edits and you don’t have to have an additional file to save your edits without harming your original raw file. One file, one file only. You can purchase Lightroom v5 at walmart.com, tigerdirect.com or bestbuy.com ($120) (around $150 at the time of this writing).

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Elements

For clarification – There are two types; Adobe Elements and Adobe Elements Plus Premier Elements. Premier contains movie editing software built-in. If you’ll be editing movies, be sure to grab Premier. If you only edit photographs but do want software that is capable of heavier editing with layers, masking and manipulating pixels, get Elements. Elements allows you to combine photos (i.e., swap heads on people photos). Elements version 12 is the latest version at the time of this writing. You can purchase Elements v12 at walmart.com, or bestbuy.com (around $70 at the time of this writing). With Premiere movie editing capabilities, be prepared to spend about $40 more.

Adobe Camera Raw

Be aware that when you use either Photoshop or Elements, when you first open a raw photo file, Adobe Camera Raw software first opens the file you are working on before actually loading the file in Photoshop or Elements. Within Adobe Camera Raw you are able to make a great deal of enhancements to your photos. Just FYI, there are different versions of Adobe Camera Raw one for Elements and a more enhanced version for Photoshop. The two versions of Adobe Camera Raw have different capabilities depending on if you’re running Elements or Photoshop.

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RAW or JPG – Which format should I shoot in?

RAW vs JPG

I know I struggled with this one when I first turned on my first DSLR camera started shooting. I began shooting using the RAW+JPG scenario on my Nikon. I figured I had both bases covered going that route. Problem, now I had double the number photo files to wade through. Take a poor shot (which I did a lot learning!) and you have to manually delete two photos from the camera on screen menu. Just keep it simple and shoot in RAW format. It’s highly flexible post processing to fix all the boo-boos you may not have caught during the photo shoot. Yes, the files are larger, but it’s the only to retain control over your finished product.

Think White Balance

I’m always tweaking my photos post-processing, so I highly recommend shooting in RAW format. In Nikon, your RAW files will have a .NEF file extension. Camera raw files contain unprocessed picture data from a digital camera’s image sensor. Please note that the will NOT match the photo as displayed in the LCD on the rear of the camera. The LCD displays .JPG format for speed and convenience. Raw files give you, the photographer, control over interpreting the image data rather than letting the camera make the adjustments. Any post editing done to raw files are non-destructive and won’t suffer from any degradation. Meaning it preserves the original raw file data. You can edit the image as you desire, export the file to a type appropriate for your destination media, and keep the original raw file intact for future use.

If you choose to shoot in .JPG format from the get-go, you are VERY limited on the post processing photo adjustments you can make. It is a compressed image format, so the file sizes are considerably smaller but it is considered to be a destructive file type. In simple terms, every time you edit and save a .JPG photo file, the photo loses quality. And that’s a big issue if you want to turn out professional photos! If you absolutely must shoot in .JPG format, use fine compression and use the highest resolution possible.

If you haven’t checked lately, massive hard drives are inexpensive. This type of file storage is cheap! Buy two for double the capacity to make sure all your files are backed up! It’s cheap insurance for all your hard earned work! Buy inexpensive brand name big TB drives.

Shoot in RAW for the most flexible options later. And always remember to take the best photo possible to avoid post processing later.

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