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In response to a reader's question I present my digital wedding workflow. It's very efficient and allows me to finish processing a wedding by the next day.
1. RAW files loaded from memory cards to a folder labelled with couple's names.
2. Imported into Lightroom.
3. Quick eyeball of all photos in library module. If a shot is spoilt by blinking or grimacing, or if someone has walked into shot, use X key to mark image as reject.
4. Verify and then delete rejected shots.
5. Work through all the images in the develop module (I can do 200 shots an hour when I'm in 'the zone' - use the paste develop settings within Lightroom to save time).
6. Tonal adjustments are the major correction to make. Tone curve to strong contrast (I apply this to all the images in two steps by copying the develop settings from the first shot and then pasting to all the rest). Recovery and exposure sliders to adjust highlights. Fill light and brightness to adjust shadows (this can introduce considerable digitial noise if the image was shot at high ISO). Contrast and blacks to further tweak contrast.
7. Adjust white balance and vibrance. If interior shots are bathed in fluorescent light, adjustment to tint (green-magenta shift) is necessary.
8. I use the 'Previous' button at the bottom of the develop module extensively. It pastes the previous photo's develop settings. Notice that I am not making changes that are unique to a shot at this stage (such as crops and rotations) as I do not want to paste these between images.
9. I now export all the images as JPEG files (Quality 80%, resolution 240) and use the post-processing 'Export actions' facility within Lightroom. I've created a Photoshop droplet based on an action which removes digital noise using Neat Image and then sharpens the image (file size can expand to 6MB). You need the pro-version of Neat Image to do this. I've created a custom noise profile for my EOS 5D - Neat Image can read the ISO setting in the EXIF data and apply the right level of noise correction. I prefer Neat Image's noise removal and Photoshop's sharpening to the equivalents in Lightroom.
10. I have a top-of-the-range MacPro but it still takes 3-4 hours to complete the above step - I often run it overnight.
11. I import these files into Lightroom with the couple's names and the suffix 'tweaked jpegs'.
12. I now adjust cropping, straighten shots and make any other minor tweaks which are necessary.
13. I choose my picks from these to make up my web slideshow.
14. I export all the shots twice as high res (files now typically 2MB) and low res (resize 1000 x 1000, resolution 72, typically 300KB) images which are burnt to DVD.
15. If I want to do any really special treatments I can use the adjusted RAW files and export to Photoshop as 16-bit TIFFs.
Please feel free to post any comments.
Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photography
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11 comments:
Hi David,
Do you still use this same process?
I'd like to know which sharpening settings you use in Photoshop.
Cheers!
Hi Richard,
I do. I use an unsharp mask with:
Amount: 100%
Radius: 1 pixel
Threshold: 0
This crisps up the images nicely!
All the best,
David
Thanks for that David,
Should I assume then that in Lightroom you leave the NR and Sharpness settings at 0?
Many thanks again
Richard
Hi Richard,
You are correct!
Yours,
David
Just one final question here :)
All NR software developers state to use NR at the start of the process with good reason. However, none of the software plugins I've tested support RAW. Is this why you use Neat Image at the end of your process?
David, do you also batch all your images across Neat Image - I was thinking that's quite a waste of time for images under 800 ISO, can these be skipped?
Thank you
Hi Richard,
If I were shooting in JPEG removing digital noise would be the first thing I'd do.
I don't do this when shooting RAW, however, as one of the most frequent procedures I use in post-processing is to increase fill light which brings out details in shadow regions and reveals further digital noise. It therefore makes sense (to me at least!) to get your tonal range sorted before you remove noise.
All of my images go through the same Photoshop action of noise removal and sharpening. As you rightly point out, images shot at ISO 800 and below aren't radically altered by the NR process but, at the same time, they're not adversely affected, and so it's much more time efficient to run them all through the same process.
Any thoughts?
All the best,
David
Hiya, clearly your process works perfectly well and is fast.
As I learned, NR profiles are based on a specific pattern of noise from a device. Once you adjust highlights, contrast, crop, etc etc in an image - you change this pattern from what is expected, hence applying NR after adjustments is not as effective and will create artifacts that manifest when you then apply final sharpening. In my tests this is clearly noticable, as applying NR at the end of the process can create noise sparkles in your high ISO images.
After hours of tests on ISO 3200 images, (with sharpening options turned off) I can report:
a) Neat Image is the fastest option on the market, but not the most effective.
b) NikSoftware's Define2 gives the best results even in automatic mode - but is upto 3times slower than NI at processing. It also offers amazing regional NR scope if you are not batch processing.
c) Imagenomic's Noiseware2 is my choice for speed and very clean NR without killing detail.
As part of my test I included a final application of USM on the images after NR. This really shows up any NR flaws.
In your flow David you are applying NR to a colour adjusted Jpeg from Lightroom. Then you compress that Jpeg again on final export. Your 5D2 profile in NI should have been created with JPEG not RAW - if you missed this. Sharpening should then be the very last process applied after the creation of the final/resized jpegs.
Of course it's all down to speed and storage requirements how users approach their post production. In an ideal world you would apply NR to your images directly on the imported RAW files. It also helps to slightly over expose your images in the first place when working at high ISO.
Many thanks!
Hi Richard,
You've done a terrific analysis here - many thanks for sharing this.
All the best,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for sharing this, very helpful!
Can I ask you why you are exporting the images as 80% quality and not 100%? and also would be better to export them as tiff for the batch process and export them as jpeg for the second time they are in lightroom? As far as I know everytime you save a jpeg, it loses a bit of quality.
I'm not trying to bit smart, I'm just asking.....
Thanks again
Angelo
Hi Angelo,
It's good to question everything!
The reason I settled on this workflow is that it's a great way of getting the jpegs down to a reasonable size for clients without having any visible effect on quality. The jpegs I provide clients with are between 2-5 Mbs at full resolution and I can also then burn a complete wedding to one DVD for clients.
80% quality for jepgs in an excellent compromise between size and quality.
I trialled my workflow using tiff and higher percentage jpegs and ended up with enormous files that looked just the same. Clients don't do any post-processing on the files so they don't need this additional scope.
Please feel free to challenge my views or suggest improvements.
All the best,
David
Nice to read how other people work
I have just done my own workflow over on my own blog!!
Some feed back would be nice !
http://www.davepiper.org.uk/blog/archives/4532
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