The little that I know about photography is that you’re goal is to capture good light in a way that tells a great story.
As mentioned in the previous post I purchased a Canon G10. This camera has got me excited again about photography because it’s basically a professional’s point-an-shoot. David Studarus recommended that I buy it and I’ve liked it so much that I also bought a second one as a gift.
Here is the problem… Now that I have great high-resolution images I don’t know what to do with them in post (i.e. photoshop, lightroom, etc) to make them look their best. Without the ‘processing’ step I’m missing out on the best representation of the story.
Here is the challenge to all you pros… The raw image of Pinkberry at The District in Tustin, CA is here. Download it and show me how you would make it look and give me a brief description of what you did in your workflow. You have my permission to post your results on your own blogs, websites, or forums but I just ask that you link back to this original post and tell me when it’s been done. If you have photoshop actions or something that you sell go ahead and mention that too.
This is your opportunity to expose an entirely different audience to portion of your workflow. Hopefully you’ll all get some additional work or sales out of it but at a minimum you’ll be teaching someone who is interested and willing to learn.
Next weekend, August 15-16, 2009, I’ll chose my favorite version and post the results here at paulmobley.com
Thanks in advance… and have fun.
Photo: © 2009 Paul Mobley, MBA in Orange County, California
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hey Paul,
Thanks for getting back in touch. I like what you’ve done with your blog. I also am a big fan of the Canon G series – I shoot primarily with the G9 and almost 99% of my post-processing is done in Lightroom. Here is my typical Lightroom workflow and what I used on your image:
1. Import and convert RAW files to .DNG for archiving purposes.
2. Boosted exposure 1 stop and used highlight recovery 43.
3. Increased black clipping +7 to add contrast.
4. Clarity +44 for overall sharpness by increasing midtone contrast.
5. Vibrance +33 for midtone saturation.
6. Luminance noise reduction at 38 because Canon G series has high pixel density and gets noisy even at low ISO.
7. Sharpening at 100, 1.5 Radius, 18 Masking. Basic rule: Zoom to 100%, overdo it and then back off to see what looks good.
8. Somewhere along the way hit ‘\’ key to toggle before image.
9. Also while you are zoomed in at 100% look at your highlight edges for weird colors that may have developed along the way. Defringed all edges and adjusted Blue and Red chromatic aberration.
10. Straightened 1.26 and cropped to remove branches around the edges. Also spot removed one remaining palm branch.
11. Vignetted cropped image by -100 and adjusted midpoint to taste.
12. Exported resized final image to JPG with sRGB colorspace.
Let me know if you have any Lightroom questions and what you think about the image.