Quick Touch Ups

Greetings, volks. Welcome to Hohenfels Volks, THE place for our place! Time for a quick post.

With the announcement and release of Lightroom 4 Beta, I thought we’d have a quick hit on image editing. We’ll be short; there won’t be anything in depth here.

Let’s start out by saying shooting RAW is the best way to go. It gives you more control and latitude in your exposure and color. The best way to edit is in head, then in camera. What does that mean? It means get it right before your expose your image. Make sure your settings are correct for your exposure and focus. It means less time fixing and more time shooting. I know we all love shooting more than we love fixing our images.

Once the image is on the computer, you have to convert from RAW to JPEG. I use Canon’s DPP. It was bundled with my camera, and I’ve updated it whenever a new version is available. Once your Raw is in your converter, make any exposure corrections you feel are needed. Then adjust your contrast, followed by minor levels adjustments.

To adjust levels, drag in the top, bottom, and sides of your histogram to get the contrast and levels right. I usually do a little crushing of the highlights and shadows, nothing more. This pops your contrast without affecting the entire image as much as the contrast adjustment. By clipping your shadows to black a little and your highlights slightly less, you create some pop to a properly exposed photo.

A touch (+1) to saturation, then finish with sharpening to make the image crisp, and that’s it. For most images, this is all you need! Convert your image and save it, and you’re done. Remember to make your resolution match your intention.

That’s all I’m going to cover for editing today. Everyone has there own vision and style. I just wanted to get the idea of getting it right in camera across, and to get folks thinking about their own editing styles.

Editing is a lot more than this, though. The amount of tools available in applications ranging from Corel’s Paintshop Pro and Adobe’s Lightroom is enough to create magic with your images. Maybe we’ll touch on that editing in another post, how we can fix minor issues and make our work that much better!

Vote now for the next theme, get your pics going, and submit them to our Facebook page. Let’s try to get more Volks participating, the more we have going on, the more opportunities we’ll have to make our photos better, and to share that love we all have of photography with others like us! Have a great weekend and enjoy the shooting!

Don’t forget to post any of your images you’d like to see here at the Hohenfels Volks Facebook page. Of course, commenting on both Facebook and here is always appreciated, too!