Just out of curiosity, Those of you who shoot RAW (and I suppose those who shoot .jpg can play too), What is your workflow? How do you determine your white balance? (ie. When you are developing a night shot of a particular attraction, how do you pick your W/B?) Go you use the eyedropper? Or a pre-set? Any tips/tricks to share with the rest of the group? BTW...Scott, how the heck do you get such vivid colors in your images? Fantastic! Happy turkey day. Tim
I'm using ACDSee Pro first now, and if I find an image I like, I'll open it in DPP. I'll go through the white balance choices and see how they look. One of them usually looks good. I'll also go through the picture styles for the 30D. I love the Clear and Nostalgia styles. I think you'll be able to start using styles too soon ;D ACDSee Pro has a color cast fixer which is really useful for most of my scanned film files. My digital collection is still dwarfed by my negative and slide collection.
i think i might have found a better way to do this.... 1st is original from gallery 2nd is with new workflow... your thoughts? [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
More shadows on the banner on the second one (first banner on the left), but I prefer the second one. It pops more to me.
Well the colors of #2 clearly look better, the sky glow has turned from the usual mauve tone indicative of light pollution to a more pleasing whitish blue. Based on that alone I vote for it, but I think the colors look nicer too. As for my workflow.. it's very crude. I have no real ability to manually adjust white balance, so I go through the presets. Usually I end up using Photoshop's auto in ACR. Sometimes I try the eyedropper, but auto has usually worked well enough for me.. at least within my limited ability to judge the results.
thanks dan... i just hope i dont have to go back and start re-doing a lot of my RAW's.... that would put me over the brink
Wow! I think #2 is amazing. Yes you get a bit more shadow on the banners, but I think you gain abit more color on the focal point as well. I'd certainly trade one for the other. What was the biggest change in workflow? I know you're not gonna give up your secrets. I'm just curious as to what the pinnacle change was. Come on Tim! LOL!
I'm using Aperture, but I guess it would be the same in others. I adjust the exposure until I'm just about to get hot spots and then adjust the temperature (usually toward blue) and then tweak saturation of the colors that I want to emphasize.